Donna Pollach

Pollach was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Los Angeles, California with her twin sister Karen.^[1] In 1969 she married Cameron Suttles and moved to Portland, Oregon, where she attended Portland State University. While studying there she became involved in the emerging women's liberation movement and participated in the development of the university's Women's Studies program.^[1]

Pollach later became active in Portland's feminist and lesbian communities, which became the primary subjects of her photographic work.

Beginning in the early 1970s, Pollach photographed feminist and lesbian communities in Portland. Her work documented a wide range of social and political activity, including women's liberation meetings, pride marches, anti-war demonstrations, and anti-nuclear protests.^[1]

In addition to documenting activism, Pollach photographed the everyday lives of members of the lesbian community, including friendships, partnerships, families, and social gatherings. These photographs provided a visual record of lesbian community formation during a period of significant social and political change in the United States.^[3]

Pollach also produced portrait and promotional photographs for artists, musicians, and performers in the Portland arts community.^[1]

Pollach's photography combined documentary and portrait traditions. Much of her work focused on capturing the everyday experiences of lesbian feminist communities rather than staged or commercial images.

Her photographs frequently depict themes of community, activism, chosen family, and evolving definitions of relationships and motherhood within lesbian communities.^[3]

Many of her images portray friends and community members in intimate or domestic settings, reflecting the close social networks that characterized lesbian feminist communities in Portland during the late twentieth century.

Pollach's work has been exhibited by the Oregon Historical Society Museum in Portland. A major exhibition of her photographs, We Were All Living a Dream: Reflections on Twentieth-Century Lesbian Feminism through the Photography of Donna Pollach, was presented from April 4, 2025, through March 29, 2026.^[3]

The exhibition presented photographs documenting feminist organizing, pride marches, political demonstrations, and everyday life within Portland's lesbian communities from the early 1970s through the early twenty-first century.^[4]

Pollach's photographic archive is preserved at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library. The collection contains approximately 1,450 photographic prints, nearly 2,000 negatives, hundreds of contact sheets, slides, and audiovisual materials documenting lesbian communities and political activism between 1970 and 2002.^[1]

The archive includes portraits, documentary photography of political activism, and images of cultural life within Portland's feminist and lesbian communities.^[1]

Historians have identified the collection as an important resource for the study of lesbian feminist movements, LGBTQ history, and community life in the Pacific Northwest during the late twentieth century.^[2]

• Photographs by Donna Pollach. Edited by Sue St. Michael. Blurb Books, 2015.