From the Archive - Bubbas, Frogtown (1993 - 1995)
We call each other Bubba, you know, like brothers. But we don’t want to be confused with the blacks in the neighborhood because they call each other brother and sister. We’re not a gang. It’s not a race thing. We don’t even have a name for our group. We’re just really good friends. We don’t go out looking for trouble. We just sit here and have fun.
From left to right: Caveman, Hobbit, Face, Chunks, Chief and Girlie Boy.
We are the Other - Walter, 38th & Chicago Bus Stop, South Minneapolis, MN
Changing Lenses is the product of an ongoing conversation between eminent sociologist Doug Hartmann, Ph.D. and myself. In each post, we exchange what’s seen behind a camera lens and what’s seen through a sociological lens to get at the diversity of perspectives and cultivate a unique look at the human experience. Below is my perspective. Read Doug’s reaction here.
From the Archive - Demolition Derby, Baker Montana, 2001
Looking For Asian America: An Ethnocentric Tour
I had never been to a demolition derby or to rural Montana before. When we first pulled in it resembled a scene from an apocalyptic movie: tidy, rustic shops lined main street, but where was everybody? A lone soul finally appeared to inform us that the derby was in town. Apparently the entire populace of Baker was at this car-as-gladiator spectacle.
An accommodating elderly gentleman in a cowboy hat excitedly explained the intricacies of the sport to us. The sight and sounds of smashing metal contrasted with the somewhat languorous audience that occasionally emitted a cheer. In many ways it didn’t seem all that different from a crowd at an outdoor Saints baseball game in St. Paul, Minnesota.
When my attention turned to photographic possibilities, I was excited to spy the only Asian face in this communal outpouring. He and his wife, both Cambodian, had settled there a while back. In dress and deportment he blended right in, with his worn blue jeans, short sleeve shirt and pocket wallet. But to me, when I look at this photo, he appears to be Photoshopped in. And then I wonder, why do I think that? Is that what I look like when I’m walking around the land of Lake Wobegon—as though I’ve been Photoshopped onto the landscape?
We are the Other - Easter Sunday, 38th & Chicago Bus Stop, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012)
Jaymie, who this morning was on his way to Word of Grace Baptist Church, grew up a block from the bus stop. After I asked him what his favorite word was he told me a story about his mom. He was with her when she was on her deathbed, a picture of Jesus hanging over her. “I thought she was gone,” he said, “but then her eyes opened and her face started to glow.” He told me that people don’t believe him when he says that her face glowed.
When he was nine his mom had a nervous breakdown and she was sent to a state hospital. His father wasn’t around so he and his two brothers and sister were separated, ending up at various orphanages and foster homes. One brother he never got to know, who was a baby when this all happened, called him out of the blue ten years ago. Some sixty years had passed. He said his name was Steve and that he now lived in Cleveland.
He has no idea what happened to his other brother who had polio and an iron lung. “Maybe he was adopted,” he said. I was going to ask him about his sister but then his bus came.
Jaymie worked at grain mills most of his life and made decent money. Keeping up with his expenses was always a problem though. When I asked him for his contact information so I could give him a photo he said that he’s homeless and is at a Catholic shelter. “I gambled too much last year”.
From the Archive - Corcoran Park, South Minneapolis, MN, Lake Street USA 1997 - 2000
We are the Other - Jerry, South Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012)
When Jerry was a kid his parents would let him have any toy he wanted on his birthday and Christmas. But only one toy. “C’mon now!” he exclaims, some 40 years later, the anguish still in his voice. He would pore over the “Wish Books” put out by Sears, JC Penney and Montgomery Wards for his one present, which was often a piece of baseball memorabilia.
He got hooked on baseball cards when he was 12, winning them when shooting marbles with the neighborhood kids. During televised baseball games he would prop them up next to the TV, matching the card to the player on the screen so he could connect with them in a personal way. “Maybe I was the only kid who did that,” he says.
Then he went to college, got a job and could finally afford all the things he couldn’t as a kid. He worked twenty years as a sales rep for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and every time he got that commission check he’d head to a flea market, rummage sale, thrift store or antique mart, constantly adding to his conglomeration: toys from the 50s and 60s, Japanese Tin Friction Cars, coins, GI Joe, model car kits, Star Wars paraphernalia, and most of all, sports cards.
Because he would buy sports cards by the boxful faster than he could look at them, his attic is now filled with piles of unopened cartons. His collection consists of 300,000 baseball cards, and if you add all the basketball, football, hockey cards, it totals a half a million, not to mention all the other toys.
He delights in talking about the history and culture that his cards represent, and gives away a lot of it in an effort to share his wealth. He is now retired and spends six days a week, often several times a day, at the Blue Ox, getting online to trade and buy more stuff on eBay and other sites.
He never married. “I can’t imagine a woman who would put up with all this,” he says laughing. “I had a girlfriend. She kicked me out because my stuff was filling up her house. I don’t blame her.”
For this first time in his life he is displaying some of the results of his life-long obsession at the Blue Ox (pictured here) with a 50-piece exhibition that has a Minnesota sports related theme. He has another exhibition lined up at the Knights of Columbus in Bloomington, Minnesota. Next Saturday, April 7, from noon to 2 pm, Jerry will host a Minnesota sports trivia event at the Blue Ox. Anyone who orders a cup of coffee will get a free baseball card of a Hall of Famer.
From the Archive - Loring Park, Minneapolis, Minnesota (circa 1995)
It was during a one-week workshop in 1981 at the long defunct Film in the Cities in St. Paul, conducted by the legendary Garry Winogrand, that I decided to become a photographer. He said a lot of memorable things that week, including his famous dictum: “There is nothing as mysterious as a fact well-described.”
About the picture taking process itself, he said, “The most important thing is knowing where to stand.” Certainly true about this photo. I was doing a series on pick-up playground basketball (I’ve played in a weekly game of hoops for 30 years) when after a series of ordinary shots, I was fortunate to be standing in the right place as the ball hit me in the head, narrowly missing the camera held to my eye.
We are the Other - Mo (Mohammed), South Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012)
Mo was a lightweight, having boxed in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Boston. “I was 130 lbs, skinnier than you back then,” he says. He had won three titles, but gave it up to support his four brothers and five sisters back in Iraq. After “running and fighting against Saddam” in 1990, he arrived in the U.S. as a refugee and ended up working 13 hours a day pumping gas in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
The owner had nine other gas stations, and one in particular was causing him trouble. “It was bad. There were fights all the time.” Mo talked the owner into letting him manage it. With hard work and a gentle but charismatic personality, he turned it around. “People trusted me,” he said.
Mo offered to buy the station and the owner asked for $70,000, but would take a $20,000 down payment. He paid $5000 a month and finally took it over in 1997, installing a grocery store that made it successful. But he was lonely. There were few Iraqis in the area and when a friend urged him to come to Minneapolis where there was a more substantial Iraqi community, he sold the gas station and left.
Soon after arriving he opened Lake and Park Grocery, a corner store less than a mile from Mill City Auto, where he visits the owner, his best friend Dan, just about every day (where this photo was taken). For two years he put in long days, “not drinking or partying.” He now owns two other grocery stores in Brooklyn Park and St. Paul and enjoys the fruits of his hard work, with an eye on sartorial appearance. “You’ve got to look good,” he says. “Because when you die you take nothing with you.”
Changing Lenses is the product of an ongoing conversation between eminent sociologist Doug Hartmann, Ph.D. and myself. In each post, we exchange what’s seen behind a camera lens and what’s seen through a sociological lens to get at the diversity of perspectives and cultivate a unique look at the human experience. Below is my perspective. Read Doug’s reaction here.
—
Big Geno and Little Geno, Minneapolis, Minnesota
When photographing I try to present people as they present themselves and let viewers form their own narratives. A photograph, however, is just a snippet of that person. If you took a thousand photographs of someone, which photograph would be truest? And who decides the truth about any photograph—the person in it, the person who took it, or the person looking at it?
You never know how a photograph will be interpreted. I have photographs that seem innocuous to me that instill fear in someone else. This photograph of a man and his dog, though, often gets a visceral reaction. Recently an installation of about 50 photographs from my Lake Street USA series that included this one was being permanently installed in a public building. We laid them out along the wall deciding which ones should go where.
Perhaps because the scandal concerning Michal Vick, the professional football player whose abuse of fighting dogs was still fresh in the public’s consciousness, or perhaps because I’ve become more cautious in what photographs I deem proper to show in public settings, I voiced that this one might cause trouble. A few moments later an African American man walked by and became upset at what he saw. “This is really offensive to me,” he blurted. “This only perpetuates what people already think of us.” We ended up putting the photograph in a basement room that is less trafficked.
Here’s an excerpt from an interview I conducted with the person in the photograph:
“This is little Geno. I’m big Geno. He’s going to be a security dog. I’m going to take my time with him. I’m just trying to get his neck to be strong. The chain is to put muscles in his chest. Right now he’s young. As he gets old he’ll get used to it.
“Once he sees me with it he know he’s got to put it on. At first he didn’t want to have it on, but now he’s used to it. It’s not being abusive. You can train a dog how you want to train a dog, just like a child. You can raise a child up to cuss out grown people. You know, you just raise your dog just the way you want to be raised up. That’s all that is.”
We are the Other - Dan & Melanie, South Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012)
Melanie and Dan are both small business owners on the same block. She “slings coffee” and he’s a body man. When I asked her to suggest someone she didn’t know well to be photographed with, she thought of Dan, who comes in once in a while for coffee. When the three of us sat in his small office and discussed the chalkboard questions, much of their conversation turned to the financial and aesthetic challenges of their respective trades.
Dan was hooked when he drove his dad’s Peugeot 404. That was back home in Jerusalem when he was seven. He then knew he wanted to work on cars the rest of his life. He was sixteen when he bought his first car, a blue 1973 BMW. German cars has been his specialty ever since.
After learning the trade from an uncle, he opened an auto body shop in Jerusalem 24 years ago that he still owns. He then started coming to Minnesota on vacations to visit relatives, but on one of the visits he fell in love with a woman, who was also born in Jerusalem, and decided to stay. They now have five children and he goes back home every couple of years.
Dan started working at Mill City Auto Body nine years ago near the corner of 38th and Chicago. I asked him if working on cars is different here than back home. “We did real body work there,” he replied. “Here they just change things.’ He explained that body parts were often not available there so he would have to, say, make a fender out of sheet metal, while here you just order the part. He was more of an artist then.
