Alaska Positive 2023 featured at Wasilla Museum
Contributed by Wasilla Museum
The Wasilla Museum is excited to host Alaska Positive, a statewide juried photographic exhibition organized and toured by the Alaska State Museum. Now in its 53rd year, Alaska Positive continues to encourage photography as an art form in Alaska.
An artist’s reception showcasing the exhibit will be on Saturday, August 23, 2025, from 1 pm - 3 pm at the Wasilla Museum, 391 N. Main Street, Wasilla, Alaska. This Alaska Positive exhibit features the works of Alaskans, including Southcentral artists: Michael Conti, Hal Gage, Bill Heubner, Loren Holmes, Amber Johnson, Matt Johnson, Michael Johnson, Bonnie Landis, Jenny Irene Miller, Richard Murphy, Kerry Tasker, Jeremy Wood, and Dennis Walworth.
Guest juror Camille Seaman selected the images for this Alaska Positive exhibit. When asked if everything has been photographed, why do we still feel compelled to lift our cameras and make images? Seaman answered:
“The power of an image is undeniable and can inspire and transform viewers as well as makers. The images I chose to include in the Alaska Positive exhibition this year were images that I may have seen in some fashion before, and still somehow arrested my attention, or showed the subject to me in a way I had not previously seen. It is in this that I think the value of an image can be found.
If you are reading this and are a maker of images my advice is, always, show me how YOU uniquely see the world. Too often we feel we must make an image LIKE that famous one or one we saw and liked. Instead, I would encourage photographers to invest in learning more about their own unique way of seeing and recording our world.
For viewers of photography, I would say, as you move through the exhibition ponder this: what is it that makes you stop in front of one image over another? What are the visual things that drawn you in, repulse, or even challenged you?
It has been my sincere honor and privilege to be this year’s juror.”
Seaman studied photography with Jan Groover and drawing with John Cohen at the State University of New York at Purchase, where she graduated in 1992. Her photographs have been published in National Geographic Magazine, Italian Geo, German Geo, TIME, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Newsweek, Outside, Zeit Wissen, Men’s Journal, Seed, Camera Arts, Issues, PDN, and American Photo, among many others. She was the Artist-in-Residence at Denali National Park in 2015.
Alaska Positive is on display through September 5, 2025. Visit the Museum Tuesday – Friday from 10 am to 3 pm or call 907-373-9071 for more information.