Steltzer emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1953. There, she learned photography and worked first as a staff photographer for a local newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey, and then for Princeton University. In 1972 she moved to Vancouver, where she began to photograph Northwest Coast Indigenous artists. Steltzer’s photographs show artists preparing materials and at work, making baskets, blankets, carvings, and more. Her portraits of artists such as Bill Reid and Robert Davidson, published in Indian Artists at Work, 1976, helped raise awareness of a Northwest Coast cultural revival. She travelled widely and published books on subjects that included Inuit, immigrants in the U.S., and the Guatemalan highlands.

Image: Ulli Steltzer, Florence Davidson, weaving a cedar hat, 1975, photo emulsion, 27.3 x 31.9 cm, Legacy Art Galleries, University of Victoria.

For further reading, see:

Cobb, Myrna, and Sher Morgan. Eight Women Photographers of British Columbia, 1860–1978. Victoria: B.C. Ministry of Labour and Camosun College, 1978.

Steltzer, Ulli. A Haida Potlatch. Foreword by Marjorie Halpin. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1984.

———. Indian Artists at Work. Vancouver: J.J. Douglas, 1976.