Lisa Ahlberg

White Center sits at the southern edge of Seattle. The 1920’s brought waves of working class people to work in the war industries along the Duwamish. Later in the 1970’s until today, it also brought waves of immigrant families resulting in one of the most diverse communities of the Northwest.

For 20 years I have photographed its people — in my makeshift studio on the street to community fairs and parades and walking up and down it’s streets.

On Delridge contains photos taken in this makeshift studio mostly on the corner of Delridge and 16th, outside of Lee's Produce and across from Platinum Cuts and Salon.  I would also set-up at the corner of 15th Ave SW and SW 98th St. and at the Jubilee Days Fair.

My photos offer a view of a Seattle that is largely hidden, or certainly not featured in the glossy magazine or newspaper write-ups. This is a Seattle much more like much of the rest of the United States today; a city with a growing immigrant population that comes from all over the globe - Asia, Africa and Latin America. This population is not centered in the fast-growing tech industry but in the traditional Seattle working class of aircraft manufacture, ship building, construction, small industry and the service sector - the same people I work with on the shop floor at Boeing.

Time seems to slow down in White Center.  It has a small town feel, far from the fancy boutiques and wealth that predominates in other Seattle neighborhoods. Instead, small, mostly family owned businesses add to a more friendly, colorful neighborhood. 

When I ask most people what they like most about White Center, the answer is most always "it's diversity". 

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The White Center neighborhood at the edge of Seattle is changing.

  “White Center has the reputation of being outside the boundary of the civilized world” said Richard Hugo, White Center’s most famous son and poet.  It's nickname is "Rat City".

Today it strikes a balance between bars, hair and nail salons, marijuana shops, auto body repair shops, and some fantastic local restaurants. 

Last July brought the news that two of the five wealthiest corporations in the U.S. (ranked by market valuation) are based in Seattle. Not surprisingly another recent story reported “Seattle rents now growing faster than any other city.” News like this captures the popular image of Seattle these days — a high tech outpost becoming ever more dominated by the wealthy. This Seattle is pushing the edges and spilling over into White Center. 

I wonder where this neighborhood is headed with the wealth and growth spreading just to the north. I expect I may not recognize much of what I’ve taken in another ten years. So, with a bit of a sense of urgency, I have begun to take more images of the landscape.

I work on the Wing Line at a big aerospace company in Seattle. We work on the factory floor building wings. The factory has been my home for a large part of my life, more than I’d like. Those I work with are my extended family. We work on the factory floor building wings at an incredibly fast rate that once reached 56 airplanes a month. Perhaps because we’ve worked the swing shift for so long, it has intensified our sense of it being a home away from home. Instead of dinners with our kids or spouses, we spend them with each other. 

There’s a certain comfort I feel when I’m there that I don’t feel elsewhere. When I clock in, I feel the sense of coming home. I’m among people who care about me. It doesn’t mean I love my job. The pace is demanding and the pounding, drilling and blasting of horns is deafeningly loud. Like most blue collar jobs, our wages and working conditions are deteriorating, but it’s still possible to make a decent union wage. They are not what they used to be and we wonder if they ever will be again.

Many of us are very far from our birth homes. We come from all over the world and have been thrown together. This series is an exploration of my extended family who I met while working on the Wing Line.