One of the most innovative Northwest artists of her time, Virna Haffer
was an internationally recognized and respected Tacoma photographer who
has slipped from both regional and national art history books. In a
career spanning more than six decades, Haffer found success as a
photographer, printmaker, painter, musician, sculptor, and published
writer, though she is primarily known as a photographer. Self-taught,
she began her ambitious career in the early 1920s, both running a
successful portrait studio and also exhibiting her unique artistic
images around the world. Margaret E. Bullock, curator of collections and
special exhibitions at Tacoma Art Museum, art historian Christina S.
Henderson, and independent curator and gallery owner David F. Martin
examined more than 30,000 of Virna Haffer's photographic negatives,
prints, and woodblocks at the Washington State Historical Society and
Tacoma Public Library's Special Collections were examined to create this
book.