Wing Young Huie visits campus

On Thurs­day, Octo­ber 8, world-renowned pho­tog­ra­pher Wing Young Huie vis­ited the

UW-Superior cam­pus for an impor­tant presentation.

His pre­sen­ta­tion was called, “Chalk Talk: More Than a Con­ver­sion about race.“
Huie explained that a great deal of his work reflects the lives of a diverse hand­ful of peo­ple, or as he said it, “I will mir­ror them, and some­times they mir­ror me.”

Huie was born and raised in Duluth. When he was a young boy, he didn’t real­ize that he was dif­fer­ent, even though he was Chi­nese and most of the kids in his grade were white. “Inside,” He said, “I felt like every­one else.” It took him a while to find out that he was different.

He told the crowd, “As a young man, I started to ask myself ques­tions like, ‘What are my own cul­tural fil­ters? What if I grew up in China, or the deep South? How would I have turned out?”

He related to the audi­ence of approx­i­mately fifty peo­ple that he worked in his father’s restau­rant, started study­ing busi­ness at the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota, changed his major to Eng­lish and then to Jour­nal­ism, “That’s prac­ti­cal,” he said.

Then he moved back to Duluth where he became inter­ested in pho­tog­ra­phy. He soon took a class at St. Scholas­tica that allowed him to go on a trip and take a lot of pictures.

At about that time he found out that his father, John Gee was an ille­gal immi­grant. Gee went to court and was accused under sus­pi­cion of his cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus. How­ever, there was a fire at the immi­gra­tion office and it burned any evi­dence the court could have used against him. He won the case.

Gee then changed the fam­ily name to Huie, and opened the fam­ily restau­rant. Huie recalled that when he moved back to Duluth, he won­dered how many more secrets his father was car­ry­ing, and about secrets that other immi­grants kept from their families.

“It was impor­tant to me,” Huie said, “to ask my father ques­tions, not as a son, but as a reporter.”
Shortly, John Huie ended up on the 1980 cover of Con­texts, a soci­ol­ogy jour­nal from the U of M. The shot was in black and white with Huie sit­ting in sharp in trousers, sus­penders and a crisp white shirt. His stern look and long, gnarled hands reflected all the years of hard work he had been through.

The next photo he showed to his audi­ence was some­thing he called “cul­tur­ally loaded,” or hav­ing many inter­pre­ta­tions; it was a pic­ture of a middle-aged white cou­ple and a black lawn orna­ment. The ceramic black boy was very dark, he was sit­ting down fish­ing, and he had exag­ger­ated lips.

Huie asked his audi­ence for a show of hands whether they did not know what to think of this pic­ture. About half of them obliged. He asked them if this image was offen­sive, and about half the audi­ence raised their hands. Only a few did not think there was any­thing wrong with it.
“The cou­ple,” he said, “told me they got this statue because they adopted a black son and they wanted him to expe­ri­ence a lit­tle black culture.”

Huie explained that although the couple’s inten­tions might have been inno­cent, this was in fact a piece of mem­o­rablilia that rep­re­sents black peo­ple through a white lens, much like Aunt Jemima syrup bot­tles, darkie shows, and Gone With theWind per­pet­u­ated black stereotypes.

Next, he showed his series from Frog­town: Pho­tographs and Con­ver­sa­tions in an Urban Neigh­bor­hood. Frog­town is a racially diverse neigh­bor­hood in Min­neapo­lis. There was a photo of a black fam­ily of about six or seven pos­ing on their porch, one of a black boy and a white boy sit­ting together by a tree, and one of an old man in a wheel-chair and a baby in a stroller.

In another dis­play, Huie detailed an expe­ri­ence he had dur­ing his Look­ing for Asian Amer­ica tour in which he met two Asian women. He asked him­self, “Which is American-born, and which is fresh-off-the-boat?” One of the women pic­tured was older, in her thir­ties, had curly hair, fair skin, and she was casu­ally dressed. The other woman was younger, tan­ner, had long strait hair and wore a black turtle­neck. He guessed the older woman was the immi­grant, and the younger one was American-born. Once he talked to them, how­ever, they turned out to be the oppo­site of who he thought they were.

Huie demon­strated how some­one who is of the same race as the per­son they see in front of them can still make incor­rect judg­ments based on assump­tions. He intro­duced the Chalk Talk exer­cise next. Huie asked mem­bers of the audi­ence to find some­one in the room whom they did not know and ask them a few ques­tions, and then write your answer on a chalk-board. Huie would then take your photo with you hold­ing the message.

The ques­tions were some­what per­sonal, as fol­lows: What are you? What advice would you give to some­one you don’t know well? How do oth­ers see you? What don’t they see? Describe an inci­dent that changed you. When do you feel you are dif­fer­ent than the peo­ple around you? When do you feel the same? What matters?

All in all, Huie demon­strated that he wants peo­ple to get a reac­tion to his pho­tog­ra­phy; he wants to get peo­ple think­ing about how we per­ceive and judge other peo­ple or judge our­selves. He leaves  the viewer with an image that is open to interpretation—one that you can choose to dis­sect or to enjoy. I was very impressed with this show, and glad to be a par­tic­i­pant as well.