Acclaimed local photographer Wing Young Huie is being recognized at the Ordway Center with a U.S. Bank Sally Ordway Irvine Award for his installation of "Lake Street USA." Huie spent four years taking photographs on and around Lake Street which were then blown up and displayed outdoors on storefronts, bus shelters and buildings. MPR’s Mary Stucky met with Huie as he began installing these enormous portraits, and filed this report.
Lake Street is one of the best known thoroughfares in Minneapolis. It used to be one of the city's grandest and most used streets, but times have changed and the people who live along the street are often poor and their neighborhoods have troubled reputations. That's something Huie has attempted to change through his art.
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[ELECTRIC DRILL SOUND] SPEAKER 1: The first photo is being grommeted to a now boarded up display window of the former Sears store at the corner of Lake Street in Chicago. It's a 12 by 8 foot black and white photo of an African-American woman and young girl. The woman's arms envelop the girl. Their eyes gaze into the distance with a wistful dignity. For Wing Young Huie, this picture is a milestone in a long artistic journey.
WING YOUNG HUIE: There are a lot of people on Lake Street who are disenfranchised and are people who are kind of invisible. Hopefully, what this exhibit will do is to show what is not often publicly seen. Photographs are powerful. It can change the way you look at reality.
SPEAKER 1: There will eventually be 9 of these enormous photos on the walls of the long vacant Sears store on Lake Street. Nearby, on the sidewalk, the street is an urban microcosm. Mothers tote young children. Young men saunter by. Grandmothers from Mexico wait at bus stops, alongside immigrants from Somalia.
WING YOUNG HUIE: It connects probably the trendiest neighborhood in the Twin Cities uptown to what is perceived as the ghetto. And I say, perceived. Lake Street has everything that urban living is about. You can find it all on Lake Street. That's what makes it really interesting.
SPEAKER 1: For the last four years, Huie has been taking photographs, trying to capture life as it's lived in the neighborhoods along Lake Street.
WING YOUNG HUIE: It's really like a family album or a community album.
SPEAKER 1: Hughie is a pioneer of this form of so-called public documentary photography. Five years ago, he gained huge attention for a similar project in Saint Paul's Frogtown neighborhood. The acclaim of that project encouraged foundations to support Huie's Lake Street photographs, which are part of a major redevelopment effort along this artery. Since the Sears store closed in 1994, $140 million in private and public money have gone into redeveloping the gargantuan store for light industrial, retail and office space. Though so far, tenants have been slow to come by.
Lake Street business owners like Darrell Ansel of the Chicago Lake Liquor Store say, the photos will help. Ansel and 150 other business owners along the street have agreed to replace the advertising in their windows with Huie's photographs.
DARRELL ANSEL: It's going to attract some attention. It can't do any harm. It's only going to do good, get people talking about us and bring some publicity.
SPEAKER 1: In fact, Huie's photograph is already attracting attention from passers by.
SPEAKER 2: It's beautiful. Yeah, I like it.
SPEAKER 3: It's gorgeous. Yeah, I like it.
SPEAKER 4: Lake Street is one not too good street. It might make it look better.
SPEAKER 5: It looks great. But I don't know what, what does it really mean? What is it there for?
SPEAKER 6: I think this is great to celebrate the rebirth of a neighborhood.
SPEAKER 1: Like his Frogtown project, Huie has plans for this to become a book. He's tape recorded conversations with the people in the photographs and plans to include their comments alongside photos.
Wing Young Huie: I'm really curious to see what will happen and what people will think of it.