Born in Chernihiv, Russian Empire to Jewish parents, Avram and Reva Aissen, Seema was the middle child of three daughters.
The family emigrated to England in 1913, then to Boston in 1922, where young Seema found her first job working in a photofinishing lab.
[1] In Los Angeles in the 1930s she joined the Film and Photo League, began her lifelong work for racial justice, and formed enduring friendships with artists and political activists including Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Woody Guthrie.
Wanting to share her personal collection of art and photographs, she held benefit shows, joined the NAACP and WILPF, was elected to the boards of those two organizations, and was soon well known in Santa Cruz.
In 2005, Seema Weatherwax had her fifth public show of her photographs, at Special Collections at the University of California at Santa Cruz, then celebrated her 100th birthday and the release of her biography, Seema’s Show: A Life on the Left, by Sara Halprin, published by the University of New Mexico Press.