Ulvis Alberts is a writer/photographer born in Riga, Latvia in 1942. He graduated from the University of Washington in Radio-TV Communications. In the late 1960’s, he published his first photo essays in Seattle newspapers. He was a member of the NW Filmmakers Co-Op and produced a dozen short, experimental and documentary films including The Poem of Ecstasy for a performance of Scriabin’s music by the Seattle Symphony.

In 1971, he was one of a handful of filmmakers accepted at the American Film Institute in Beverly Hills. He moved to Los Angeles where he worked on independent films as a cinematographer, editor and art director.

Alberts is a photojournalist who worked 15 years in Hollywood. His photographs, including celebrities in the late 1970’s, have been published worldwide in magazines, newspapers, books and as posters and postcards.

In 1981, he published a fine art book Poker Face, a study of big time card players in Las Vegas.

In 1983, Alberts was the first Latvian-American invited by the Riga Fotostudija to exhibit his photography in Latvia. The show, largely of his L.A./Hollywood work, drew record crowds in Riga, at that time, a closed, Communist-run society. His work was put on tour to other Latvian cities and traveled for 2 years.

In subsequent trips, he hand carried Latvian photography to the West and organized exhibitions. The first in the U.S. in 1984 was at the Silver Image Gallery in Seattle.

Alberts also facilitated the first Phillipe Halsman exhibition for Riga in 1985. Halsman was born in Latvia but his photographs (more than 100 LIFE magazine covers) had not been there as an exhibition. Yvonne, his wife, attended the opening.

It was Alberts’ efforts in 1987 through his contacts in the Latvian photography community – that a major touring exhibition of photography from the U.S.S.R. was organized for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The exhibition opened in January of 1991.

Alberts returned to the Northwest in 1987. He has been writing, printing and editing photographs for an overview of his almost 3 decades in photography – a book of photographs & poems: America: Burden of Dreams.

Most recently Alberts has been busy with three exhibitions in Riga, Latvia during 2001 (commemorating the 800th birthday of the city). Alberts showed photographs from "The Hollywood Years" (1973-1987) and his ongoing series "Riga Young" (1983-2000).