We are the Other - Hai Singing, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012) I asked Hai if he ever gets bored waiting for customers. “No,” he replied. “I sometimes sit all day and think about music.” The 40 songs he’s written in 20 years traverse loss and migration, witnessing burning bodies in India, sights in Alaska and Wyoming, the death of his mother and the memories of his homeland of Vietnam before the Communists took it over. He was inducted into the South Vietnamese Army at age 20, served as a radio operator for 14 years, and was captured briefly by the Viet Cong, spending a week as a POW before escaping. “I hated it,” he says. “I don’t like communism. I like freedom.” Although he owned a barbershop in Saigon for ten years, he still had to get his barber’s license at the Minneapolis Community & Technical College. He held two jobs, working 14-hour days as a machinist in the morning and then onto Great Clips at night. With his savings he opened up Tip Top last year. He said that in Vietnam the barber, not the customer, chooses the style of hair because back there you only had a scissors and comb while here you use clippers. Also because of communism people were afraid of choice and thought it better to leave the decision up to the barber and not argue. You make a fuss and they’d take you away or kill you. “America knows how to build a civilization,” says Hai. “What better way to understand American culture than to make people look nice? My clients come from all over the world: Mexico, Laos, China, Cambodia, Russia, Africa. You don’t have to be a politician to affect a community. You can just be a small business owner.”
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We are the Other - Hai Singing, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012)

I asked Hai if he ever gets bored waiting for customers. “No,” he replied. “I sometimes sit all day and think about music.”

The 40 songs he’s written in 20 years traverse loss and migration, witnessing burning bodies in India, sights in Alaska and Wyoming, the death of his mother and the memories of his homeland of Vietnam before the Communists took it over. He was inducted into the South Vietnamese Army at age 20, served as a radio operator for 14 years, and was captured briefly by the Viet Cong, spending a week as a POW before escaping.

“I hated it,” he says. “I don’t like communism. I like freedom.”

Although he owned a barbershop in Saigon for ten years, he still had to get his barber’s license at the Minneapolis Community & Technical College. He held two jobs, working 14-hour days as a machinist in the morning and then onto Great Clips at night. With his savings he opened up Tip Top last year.

He said that in Vietnam the barber, not the customer, chooses the style of hair because back there you only had a scissors and comb while here you use clippers. Also because of communism people were afraid of choice and thought it better to leave the decision up to the barber and not argue. You make a fuss and they’d take you away or kill you.

“America knows how to build a civilization,” says Hai. “What better way to understand American culture than to make people look nice? My clients come from all over the world: Mexico, Laos, China, Cambodia, Russia, Africa. You don’t have to be a politician to affect a community. You can just be a small business owner.”

This is the beginning of what I’m calling a serialized photographic novel, where every Sunday (round midnight) there will be a new installment that often will be connected—directly or tangentially—to the previous one. I will allow serendipity to somewhat guide me as I spiral outward from the first photographic stone cast, following thematic, conceptual, and character-driven threads. At times I will compel narratives by asking the various characters, major and minor, to interact with those they would normally not—their “Others” if you will. There will be eventual multiple story lines in different locations that may or may not coalesce. Also anticipate abrupt and disjointed asides, interludes & meanderings as I make my way throughout the Twin Cities, and beyond, capturing in content and form the epic ordinariness of who and what we are. — We are the Other- Tip Top, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012) The View from the Window at Le Gras was the first successful permanent photograph, created by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 at Sain-Loup-de-Varennes, according to Wikipedia. The view from my storefront gallery window on 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in South Minneapolis is Tip Top Haircut, where every business morning without fail, an elderly Asian man sweeps (or shovels) the sidewalk debris from this busy urban corner, his front door just steps from a bus stop. In the nine months since I moved in I have managed to wave at him only sporadically and exchange a few brief pleasantries on the street. Sitting behind my desk I can spy him moving about his tiny tidy shop. Often, though, he’s sitting in his usual spot under the hair dryer, waiting in anticipation. The sandwich board in front reads: ALL HAIRCUTS $9. He told me that he’d like to get 10 - 15 customers a day. But some days no one comes in. I took this photograph a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time I had been inside. If not for my camera I might have never crossed the threshold.
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This is the beginning of what I’m calling a serialized photographic novel, where every Sunday (round midnight) there will be a new installment that often will be connected—directly or tangentially—to the previous one. I will allow serendipity to somewhat guide me as I spiral outward from the first photographic stone cast, following thematic, conceptual, and character-driven threads.

At times I will compel narratives by asking the various characters, major and minor, to interact with those they would normally not—their “Others” if you will. There will be eventual multiple story lines in different locations that may or may not coalesce. Also anticipate abrupt and disjointed asides, interludes & meanderings as I make my way throughout the Twin Cities, and beyond, capturing in content and form the epic ordinariness of who and what we are.

—

We are the Other- Tip Top, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012)

The View from the Window at Le Gras was the first successful permanent photograph, created by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 at Sain-Loup-de-Varennes, according to Wikipedia. The view from my storefront gallery window on 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in South Minneapolis is Tip Top Haircut, where every business morning without fail, an elderly Asian man sweeps (or shovels) the sidewalk debris from this busy urban corner, his front door just steps from a bus stop.

In the nine months since I moved in I have managed to wave at him only sporadically and exchange a few brief pleasantries on the street. Sitting behind my desk I can spy him moving about his tiny tidy shop. Often, though, he’s sitting in his usual spot under the hair dryer, waiting in anticipation.

The sandwich board in front reads: ALL HAIRCUTS $9. He told me that he’d like to get 10 - 15 customers a day. But some days no one comes in. I took this photograph a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time I had been inside. If not for my camera I might have never crossed the threshold.