The Language of Urbanism

Check out Wing Young Huie’s new blog at the Strib’s Your Voices.

“Your Voices features unique perspectives from members of your community. Here you’ll find commentary on current events, public issues and day-to-day life in Minnesota.”

Wing’s first two entries in the blogosphere are “Good Morning America” and “Found In Translation.”

Huie is currently photographing the neighborhoods connected by University Avenue in St. Paul for a six-mile installation in 2010, and both entries are from that project, “The Language of Urbanism: A Six-Mile Photographic Inquiry.” In words words as “documentary” as his images, Huie tells the story of a local – and implicitly or explicitly, his intersection with that story.

Wing Young Huie, Untitled, University Avenue, 2006 “It’s been 12 years since he retired as a Hennepin County caretaker for mentally ill adults, but his days are packed with volunteer work and a busy social life. He never married and has no siblings or children. ‘I’m still hoping,” he says.’ For a while he had a button that read, ‘Looking for a sugar momma,’ but didn’t get any bites.”

Wing Young Huie, Hubbs Center, 2008 “Until recently he had been an engineer in China making good money and was now in St. Paul looking for work. Anything, he said, even washing dishes. I met him at the Hubbs Center in St. Paul where he was learning English. I asked if I could photograph him for my University Avenue Project, but it was difficult because my Chinese was worse than his English.”