Artist 7: Lake Street, USA, photographs by Wing Young Huie

Lake Street, USA is a public art exhibition made up of 600 photographs taken by Wing Young Huie. The photographs were displayed in store windows, bus stops, sides of buses and sides of buildings along six miles of Lake Street from the Mississippi River to Lake Calhoun in the Summer and Fall of 2000. Huie lives on Lake Street and meets most of the people he photographs on Lake Street. His pictures show the diverse mix of people and cultures living in the neighborhoods along Lake Street. He also interviewed some of the people and some of the photos are accompanied by the words of the people in them. The website, http://lakestreetusa.walkerart.org/, has a collection of the photographs and message boards and live chats for discussions about the photos.

This project is intresting to me because I am a double major in art and anthropology and I want to foucs on photography. Huie combines the two disciplines to capture the lives and diversity of the people living on Lake Street. His photography is both artistic and anthropological. By amassing 600 photos, he documents the cultural, religious, and socioeconomic diversity of the residents of Lake Street. The interviews he does with the people he photographs also add anthropological data because they give people a chance to explain what it is like for them to live in thier neighborhood.