The lasting impact of the photographer, writer and environmental advocate who died in October 2025, and whose work and life are honored in an exhibit at Astoria’s RiverSea Gallery through February 10.
Roger Dorband, comrade and fierce leader in the struggle to save the forests of the Pacific Northwest, joined the Ancestors on October 5, 2025, passing in his sleep at age 81. A photographer, writer, sculptor, and activist, he aimed his words and lens at ecosystems — rivers, forests, mountains, neighborhoods, streets.
“Location, location, location,” said fellow photographer and longtime friend Robert DiFranco, one of the co-founders of Blue Sky Gallery in Portland. They met in 1978.
”He was bitten by the photography bug and bitten hard. I sold Roger his first camera and he took that 35mm and was on his way. Paris, Thurman Street, the High Desert, the Rogue River valley or his beloved Astoria and North Coast, camera in hand, passion in his heart, eye on the prize, the man was there, and on a mission. He was like the Old Post Office – through rain, snow, ice or hail, HE DELIVERED. And always the full package! I will miss him.”
A show of his photography opened at RiverSea Gallery in Astoria on Saturday, January 10, and continues there through February 10. Curator Jody Miller, also a dear friend of Roger’s, spoke of his range and visual poetry: “Roger made masterpieces of color and light, painterly work that inspired my own work as a photographer.”
Carol Raphael, in her review for Hipfish Monthly of his 2023 show at RiverSea, describes his photographs in and around Astoria as “infused with the luminous soft light of the northern coastal region and impeccably composed. … There is a quality of stillness, serenity, and even transcendence.”…