Oral history interview with Bette Lee
Scope and Contents
This oral history interview with Bette Lee was conducted by Sandy Polishuk from June 17 to December 29, 2014. The interview was conducted in two sessions. The interview transcript also includes several of Lee's photographs.
In the first interview session, conducted on June 17, 2014, Lee discusses her early career as a photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1980s, her involvement with the Livermore Activism Group, and how she began her career photographing protest movements. She speaks about her involvement in activist groups in Portland, Oregon, after moving there in 1989, and talks about some of the protests she photographed. She describes some of the photographs she took of protests and marches around the United States, including anti-war protests during the Gulf War from 1990 to 1991 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and particularly featuring Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a U.S. soldier who was killed in Iraq.
In the second interview session, conducted on December 29, 2014, Lee continues to describe some of her photographs, focusing on those taken in Oregon, including photos of May Day demonstrations, pro- and anti-war marches, and protests against anti-immigration legislation. She also describes photographs of the Occupy Portland movement, and of protests following the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. She talks about how her photographs document the militarization of police. She closes the interview by discussing the theme of a photo essay that would appear in Oregon Historical Quarterly in 2016.
Dates
- Creation: 2014 June 17-December 29
Creator
- Lee, Bette, 1949- (Interviewee, Person)
- Polishuk, Sandy, 1940- (Interviewer, Person)
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open for research.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Copyright for the photographs included in the interview transcript is held by Bette Lee. Use is allowed according to the following statement: In Copyright, https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Biographical note
Bette Lee was born in Singapore in 1949. She first studied photography while a student at a community college in California. She went on to study photography at San Francisco State University in the 1980s, but dropped out to focus on photographing protest movements in the Bay Area. She came to Portland, Oregon, in 1989, and spent her career photographing protests and marches in that city, including various anti-war protests, the Occupy movement in the early 2010s, and the Black Lives Matter protests in the early 2020s.
Extent
778 Megabytes (3 audio files (WAV, 2 hr., 34 min., 15 sec.) + transcript (114 pages))
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
Oral history interview with Bette Lee conducted by Sandy Polishuk from June 17 to December 29, 2014. Lee discusses her career as a photographer of protest movements.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Bette Lee, January 2015 (Lib. Acc. 28434).
Publication note
Subject
- Lee, Bette, 1949- (Person)
- Sheehan, Cindy (Person)
- Title
- Guide to the oral history interview with Bette Lee
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Sarah Stroman
- Date
- 2022
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- Finding aid is written in English.
Repository Details
Part of the Oregon Historical Society Research Library Repository
1200 SW Park Ave.
Portland OR 97205 United States
5033065204
5033065240
libreference@ohs.org