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Wing Young Huie

The Language of Urbanism: A Six-Mile Photographic Inquiry

We had an audience when we interviewed photographer 1996 Bush Artist Fellow Wing Young Huie in his Franklin Avenue studio on a summer day in 2005 (the conversation became the Gallery piece in that year’s September issue of Giving Strength). The large prints around us showed African-American teen girls braiding a friend’s hair, a young man getting a haircut from his father Hmong elder outside on the porch steps and a Somali toddler riding a toy scooter down the sidewalk (her mother just a few steps behind).

These were the faces of Lake Street U.S.A., Huie’s then-current exploration of a neighborhood. The photos were familiar—others just like them were scattered around the neighborhood in Huie’s black-and-white, journalistic images displayed at bus shelters and peering, 12 feet tall, out from the plate-glass windows of storefronts.

In 2005, in addition to continuing his celebration of diversity through another project, 9 Months in America (which culminated in his third book), Huie had also begun teaching students about the power of photography to create and destroy stereotypes. “Over our lives we see billions of images,” he said. “What we know of each other has a lot to do with our image-driven culture.”

In the three years that have passed, Huie’s fascination with faces and neighborhoods has only grown. In collaboration with Public Art St. Paul, he has begun work on The Language of Urbanism, a six-mile-long gallery of 360 pictures that will reflect the “complex cultural and socio-economic diversity” of the Saint Paul neighborhoods along University Avenue.

He is occupied now in photographing the everyday lives of citizens in the various neighborhoods connected by this singular street. Then in 2010, the results will be projected on store windows along University Avenue, in 12 locations, one every half mile, 30 photographs per site. An additional store venue will showcase the work of designated community photographers (whom Huie will train in a series of workshops). The “show” will begin at twilight each evening and run until dawn. Large photographs will also be displayed on buildings and in windows, adding a daytime presence. Accompanying many of the photos will be the words of the people in the photographs.

Monthly outdoor community screenings using portable screens in parking lots and other outdoor spaces will function as old-fashioned “home slide shows” with University Avenue as the living room. The screenings will also “serve as a backdrop for a variety of performances by neighborhood residents and organizations, revealing the cultural richness of the area as viewers picnic and commune.”

Huie expects the project will form partnerships with schools, community organizations and businesses so that local residents can supply their own photographs, giving the exhibition the ability to become perpetual.

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