nwasianweekly.com
April 5, 2008

Photo from “Looking for Asian America,” by Wing Young Huie

Wing Young Huie’s book, “Looking for Asian America,” is sub-titled “An ethnocentric tour.” Huie said the “pertinent question is: How did Wing, a product of white culture and immigrant parents ‘see’ America?” This photograph was taken at Death Valley, Calif.

Looking for a contest winner

By Eleanor Lee
Northwest Asian Weekly

As readers of our delightful newspaper might be aware, the Northwest Asian Weekly is sponsoring a photography contest titled, “Asian Heritage in Your Own Backyard.” The idea is meant to showcase all those unexpected instances of a thriving Asian legacy in the mainstream community. The inspiration for the contest came when a review copy of “Looking for Asian America,” a photography book by Wing Young Huie, came into our office several months ago.

We were enamored with the book. “What a great concept. What great images,” we thought. So when the publicist for Huie’s book asked if we were interested in running a review, we responded, “Better than that — we want to copy his idea!” Luckily, Huie not only graciously granted permission for the contest, he agreed to be our special guest judge.

Huie is a professional photographer who has exhibited numerous shows, including at the Tweed Museum of Art, in Minnesota, the Minnesota Museum of American Art and the Ludwig Museum, in Budapest, Hungary.

His best-known work is Lake Street USA, which in the summer and fall of 2000 transformed six miles of a well-known Minneapolis thoroughfare into a public art project.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune named him “Artist of the Year” in 2000 and he has published two other books besides “Looking for Asian America.”

Huie recently told the Northwest Asian Weekly that what he found most surprising in his quest for “Asian America” was everything and nothing. He explained, “In a way, everything was surprising and nothing was surprising. I think when you look closely enough the mundane becomes fascinating. And vice versa. One day it’s an unassuming rambler masquerading as an Elvis shrine more affecting than Graceland, and the next it’s flypaper in a Chinese restaurant kitchen.”

Huie had far too many unforgettable encounters all over the country to choose a favorite. He said, “I remember being mesmerized by a country stream outside a rural Washington town that looked like a faux Bavarian village, a Vietnamese enclave in the remote Louisiana bayou, an isolated Hutterite colony in upstate Montana, a Norman Bates-like motel in Coos Bay, Oregon, a Chinese home-made noodle shop in Vancouver, and a Hole in Wang donut shop in Andy of Mayberry’s hometown owned by a white couple, both former truck drivers, to name but a few” of the many memorable places he visited and photographed.

A word of advice for amateur photographers and would-be contest entrants: Don’t be afraid to take lots of photos. Huie said that from the 7,000 photographs he took, he considered about 300. Ultimately, 100 ended up in the book.

As for people’s willingness to grant permission to be a subject, Huie said, “Amazingly, almost everyone I approached to photograph consented. My percentage in past projects has usually been 50-50. I think approaching everyone as a couple helped.” Huie traveled with his wife, Tara, for the entire nine months of the project.

In fact, traveling as a couple brought considerable benefits. Tara kept a journal throughout the trip, and her travelogue is included in the book, imbuing the book with context, background and a personal touch.

Tara is not of Asian descent, and Huie writes in the book’s preface that his wife’s travelogue was from the “viewpoint of a white woman raised in middle-class, suburban Minnesota whose knowledge of Chinese culture, language and medicine far surpasses mine. She didn’t grow up needing to think about ethnocentric implications, but she constantly bumped into them because of the focus of the trip and because she was married to me.”

Huie admits that “her whiteness” inevitably makes an impact on people’s perception of them, but most of the time, he said, “I forget we are a biracial couple.”

In fact, he initially expected to encounter some “friction traveling as a biracial couple, perhaps in the deep South” but realized that his “preconceptions proved to be just that.”

For more information on Wing Young Huie, visit www.wingyounghuie.com. For Northwest Asian Weekly’s photography contest information and rules, see Page 8.

Eleanor Lee can be reached at e.lee@nwasianweekly.com.

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