[LISTEN] Arts on Fire – Wing Young Huie Interview

An interview with Minneapolis-based photographer Wing Young Huie, who will be in Jamestown, NY on Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. to present “American Landscape: How Photographs Inform Us” in the Scharmann Theatre on Jamestown Community College’s Jamestown Campus.

Huie is a photo journalist who has created numerous photographic projects documenting the socioeconomic and cultural realities of American society. His most well-known works – Frogtown (1995), Lake Street USA (2000), and The University Avenue Project (2010) – transformed the Twin Cities’ urban areas into public photo galleries, reflecting the everyday lives of thousands of its citizens in the midst of some of the most diverse concentrations of international immigrants in the country.

Huie’s projects have been published in five books, including Looking for Asian America and Lake Street USA, both of which are available at JCC’s Hultquist Library.

According to Huie, his projects create societal mirrors of who we are, seeking to reveal not only what is hidden, but also what is plainly visible and seldom noticed.

As an Asian American, Huie is particularly conscious of the ways that stereotypes shape our understanding of people who look differently than we do, and more generally, how little we can know about another person from the way they look. Huie designed a Chalk Talk workshop in which participants conduct short interviews designed to bridge the distance between one another and where insights are shared through photographs.

The program, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Katharine Jackson Carnahan Endowment for the Arts and JCC’s college program committee.