We are the Other at the Kennedy Heights Center
Minnesota-born street photographer Wing Young Huie recalls one of the best comments he’s received about his pictures: “Your photos gave me the chance to stare.”
So take a good, long look at We Are the Other, Wing’s exhibit at Kennedy Heights Arts Center. And take a good, long look at yourself and the assumptions you make about different populations.
Wing gently asks, “What do you see?”
I stood before a photo of a white man holding the hands of a boy and a girl while walking through a trash-strewn alley in urban Minneapolis. I saw an intense-looking guy who appeared rough around the edges with his long hair and beard. I wondered how much attention and culture the little ones received. This single black-and-white snapshot of their world seemed bleak.
Then I looked through the photographer’s binder of backstories for several images in the show. The young dad told Wing he takes the children through alleys because he thinks they’re lush. He and the kids catch and release the Monarch butterflies they find resting on weeds. They visit an old man who likes to tell stories about a pile of stones that became a cathedral. The youngsters use objects that they pick up on their walks to make puppets that “dance and breathe.”
So much for first impressions.
Wing presents his pictures without being preachy, because he realizes his own biases. As he grew up playing basketball in his largely white hometown of Duluth, his immigrant parents seemed exotic to him. He says he is still exploring what he calls his “Chinese-ness” through a white middle-class prism.
“I forgot what I looked like,” Wing says.
Ultimately, We are the Other is a mirror for understanding ourselves.
Through Nov. 10. Free. More info: kennedyarts.org.
Arbus, Frank, Penn: Masterworks of Post-war American Photography at Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park
Part of the appeal of a broad event like FotoFocus and its Open Archive theme is the opportunity to trace how one generation inspired another. As he documents Americans’ hyphenated identity, street photographer Wing Young Huie (see above) reveals himself to be not only the descendant of Chinese immigrants but also of artistic greats like Diane Arbus, Robert Frank and Irving Penn.
Arbus, Frank, Penn: Masterworks of Post-war American Photography, a stark exhibit inside the antiquities museum at Hamilton’s Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park, points toward the cracks that were widening in the country at the time along socioeconomic, racial, cultural and geographic lines.
The Robert Frank pictures date from 1953-58 and include images from his seminal book The Americans. “Trolley: New Orleans” (1955) depicts a pair of young white children at the center of a segregated car where a scowling, reserved white woman sits before them and a black man with a tired, plaintive expression occupies the seat behind. Time magazine named it one of the 100 most influential pictures ever taken.
Arbus didn’t blink while documenting the underside of the 1960s with raw, direct photos. Like Wing, sometimes she stepped away from the street and into our backyards and living rooms, where she found detached suburbanite parents, nudist retirees and a man in curlers.
Best known for fashion photography, Penn sounds like the odd one out among the show’s trio. But the images here include his portraits of Indian families in Cuzco, Peru, and some of his “big nudes” from 1948-51. The careful composition of these pictures calls to mind some of the sculptures on Pyramid Hill’s grounds. Penn’s artistic touch elevates subjects who were otherwise overlooked at the time.
While viewing this exhibit, I wished for the kinds of backstories that Wing Young Huie provides. These "unseen" individuals of the postwar could then not only be noticed, but better understood.
Through Nov. 30. Free with $8 park admission, membership or FotoFocus passport. More info: pyramidhill.org.
Peter Moore at Carl Solway Gallery
New York photographer Peter Moore, who died in 1993, spent much of the 1960s and ’70s documenting the avant-garde movement. Shown alongside works by Fluxus artists like John Cage and Yoko Ono, Moore’s images at Carl Solway Gallery in the West End capture a wonderful celebration of the absurd. Cellist Charlotte Moorman wears a TV bra by Nam June Paik with the nonchalance of Lady Gaga modeling a meat dress. Seize this chance to step back a few decades and hang out with artists who were ahead of their time. Anything that might have seemed odd then makes perfect sense now.
Through Dec. 22. Free. More info: solwaygallery.com.
Through the Lens of Time at the Mini Microcinema
FotoFocus is going to the movies all month long at the Mini Microcinema in Over-the-Rhine. Saturday is a repeat screening of Through the Lens of Time by Ann Segal. For the past two biennials, the native Cincinnatian presented documentaries about fellow local photographers, including Michael Wilson, Anita Douthat, Cal Kowal, Gordon Baer, Jymi Bolden and Robert Flischel. This time she makes herself the subject, reflecting on her 40-year career. Through a series of stills, we come along on foreign travels and join her in meditating on nature’s beauty. The most intimate moments come, though, when the video camera locks in on her eyes and Segal shares life experiences that include her courtship with her husband and a battle with cancer. “I like for people to connect with their own inner landscapes,” she says. “Photographers are telling old stories from a collective memory.”
Reception 3:30 p.m., screening 4:30 p.m. Oct. 20. Free with $5 suggested donation or FotoFocus passport. More info: mini-cinema.org.
For info about $25 FotoFocus passports and all programming, go to fotofocusbiennial.org.