New Digital Collection at The Seattle Public Library: Jack Large's Photos of 1960s Seattle Counterculture
release date: May 2, 2018
As part of The Seattle Public Library's commitment to preserving and sharing Seattle's culture and history, we've put 1,200 images of life in 1960s Seattle on the Library's website.
The Jack Large Photograph Collection documents the adventures and counterculture lifestyle of photographer Jack Large and his artist friends through the late 1960s in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.
This collection of about 1,200 photographic slides, taken primarily between February 1966 and July 1969, was donated to The Seattle Public Library following Large's Kickstarter campaign titled Pike Market Memories 1966-1968. Historic details fill the collection – here are some of the gems you'll find:
- The Pike Place Market before its renovations
- People attending the Volunteer Park Be-In, a 1967 flower children gathering
- A fashionable woman posing in a phone booth on Pike Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue
- Jackie with Richard Beyer's Sasquatch, Anderson Gallery, January 1968 (the statue that is now located in the Pike Place Market)
- Bus commuters at 4th Avenue and Pike Street, May 1967
- Concertgoers at the Duvall Piano Drop, April 1968
- Jack Large's studio, as seen from Alaskan Way Viaduct, circa 1967 (back side of Pike Place Market)
- Two old men standing in front of Pay'N Save Drug Store, 319 Pike St., May 1967
- Psychedelic exposed photography
Large is a semi-retired educator/anthropologist, writer, editor, photographer and publicist for projects of literacy, art and learning. He taught English in South Korea for a number of years and lives there now with his wife. His counterculture photos of 1960s Seattle are a time capsule of our city's history.
“The Jack Large Photograph Collection covers a time period and format not well represented in our other photograph collections," said John LaMont, special collections librarian. "It includes many street scenes, images of downtown Seattle, the Pike Place Market and Volunteer Park. Of particular note are photographs of the Pike Place Market taken during the time when the Friends of the Market opposed redevelopment of the Market; these pictures were presented to the Seattle City Council in support of the Friends of the Market.”
To help you locate photos more easily, we’ve created a digital map of some of the places where these photos were taken. You can also try your own keywords in the search box.