Seattle and Los Angeles, 1982–1989.

Steve Raber went nowhere without a camera. Raised in Eden Valley, Washington, between Port Angeles and the wild edge of Olympic National Park, he grew up watching closely, attuned to the quiet conversations between people and the places that shaped them. He left home in his late teens, moving between jobs and households — easy to like, making friends everywhere he landed.

By 1982 he had moved to Seattle and enrolled in the photography program at Everett Community College, giving himself over to the medium completely — history, mechanics, darkroom. He soon found his way into the city's pre-AIDS fashion and club scene, photographing three young designers just starting out — Jay Linwick, Trina Turk, and Jonathan Skow — friendships that outlasted the shoot.

Raber moved to Los Angeles in 1984, freelancing as an assistant and quickly earning a reputation for his instinct for light. 1985 became his defining year. Along Hollywood Boulevard, inside clubs like the Fire Fly and the Frolic Room, and at the drag balls held in the Palladium Theater, Raber found the people mainstream culture looked past — and photographed them with total clarity and affection. His approach never changed: he'd see someone who caught his eye and simply ask, can I take your picture?

It's like being invited to the best party ever — the one you'd never receive an invitation to.

In the late 1980s, John Leitch — the center of Raber's circle — fell ill with AIDS, and Raber stayed close through his final months, driving him through the city in his great white Cadillac just so he could feel the air. Leitch died in 1989.

Raber remained in Los Angeles, turning his eye toward automotive photography, his feel for light finding new expression in chrome and paint — work that reached national campaigns, a few airing during the Super Bowl. In early 2020 he contracted COVID-19, and complications, compounded by a congenital kidney condition, gradually wore down his heart. He died peacefully at home, his large-format Hasselblad still sitting in the living room, never far from reach after five decades.