Silver Owl Attlee finds art and journalism in photography

A photograph of an Underwood typewriter symbolizes writing and journalism for Silver Owl Tracey Attlee. Her picture “Dream Maker” of an Underwood she found in a railroad museum in Montpelier, Va., won her an honorable mention in the Art League of Alexandria’s October show. She dedicated the picture to her father, a high school English teacher, and her colleagues.

“I associate this piece of equipment with him and other writers and journalists,” she explains, adding, “I think the Underwood typewriter is beautiful visually and symbolically. To me it evokes grandeur, mystery and power and is a sentimental symbol of American writers and journalists.”

She once photographed journalist Hugh Sidey, who kept his Underwood next to his computer to “remember from whence he came.”

Her parents led her into art as well as writing. Her father decorated a section of her fishing rod with individually colored threads that formed the stars and stripes of a waving American flag. Her mother taught her to draw portraits of people. “First she would draw me and then I would draw her, “Attlee said.

Photography has been both art and journalism for Attlee. Art became significant to her when her watercolors and photographs began selling in an art gallery in her hometown. Photojournalism became significant when more of her photographs than her articles were published.

Attlee says she does art photography for herself; she did photojournalism for others. An English and communications graduate of Hood College, she worked as a freelance White House photographer for the Associated Press and the New York Times Washington Bureau.

She cites her most memorable images as a front page photo of President Clinton in a hail storm (his military escort's umbrella turned inside out in a sudden wind gust and she caught that instant) and an AP photo of fogbound Air Force One on the ground on Halloween, which she called "The Ghost of Air Force One."

Attlee now does wedding and portrait photography from Virginia to New York on a fulltime basis.