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Edward C. Johnston

St. George Island Portraits - 1922

Edward C. Johnston
1887 – 1951

Shown with box camera, date unknown, RG22, NARA
Pacific Alaska Region (Anchorge). The original negatives
 for the portraits are housed at the National Marine
 Mammal Library, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Admistration, Seattle, Washington.

An ardent photographer, Johnston took a series of
striking portraits of some St. George Island residents
while working as an agent for the U.S. Dept. of Commerce
on the island. He worked as an agent both on St. George
Island (1919-20, 1922-25) and on St. Paul Island (1925-27).

He also served as superintendent of the Pribilof Islands
from 1939-48. Johnston typed up his subjects’ genealogical
information on index cards. This information is included with
each portrait.

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The Edward C. Johnston, St. George Island Portraits (33), 1922 collection is currently on display at Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, Inc. 1131 E. International Airport Road. You may view this exhibit during business hours: Monday - Friday, 8 am - 4:30 pm.

- PHOTOGRAPH ORDERING INFORMATION -

We offer 8 x 10 and 5 x 7 copies of photographs. Click here

We also have a booklet which includes a reduced size of the portraits. For questions or comments please contact the Cultural Heritage Department.

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Edward C. Johnston’s St. George Island Portraits – 1922

These stunning portraits of St. George Island residents in 1922 are extraordinary in many ways. As far as we know, this is the first printing and public viewing of these photographs. The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the conservator of Johnston’s photographic Collection, had listed the portraits’ glass plate negatives
in the Johnston collection, but they had gone missing. In 2008, thirty-two glass plate portrait negatives turned up in a former Naval Air Field Hangar on NOAA’s Sand Point
campus in Seattle, along with about 238 glass plate negatives and 455 nitrate film negatives of Pribilof Islands’ flora that Johnston had photographed during his tenure as
a Department of Commerce agent on the Pribilof Islands.

More importantly, this collection is unique because they show men, women, and children of the Pribilof Islands in a formal setting. Much of the recorded history of the
Pribilofs focuses on fur seals and the fur-seal industry. Additionally, few formal portraits were being taken in Alaska at the time, especially of its indigenous population – and
let alone on one of the remote Pribilof Islands. It is our fortune that Johnston’s love of photography and desire to document Unangan (Aleut) life on St. George Island outside
of their role as laborers in the seal industry, led him to capture an important part of Pribilof Islands’ history.These are some of the earliest photographic portraits of
Unangan on the islands.

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Exhibit Sponsors

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; NOAA Preserve America Initiative; National Marine Fisheries Service; National Marine Mammal Laboratory Library; Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association; St. George Tanaq Corporation