Stories of Self (Vol. 4)

Stories of Self is a(n approximately) monthly essay series by Scott F. Parker that explores the nature of the composed self through conversations with memoirists, theorists, artists, and possibly musicians.

Just the Right Amount of Empathy with Wing Young Huie

Shooting pictures is a lot like shooting a basketball for me.
When it’s going well the ball seems to go in by itself.
—Wing Young Huie

Wing Young Huie is a photographer best known for massive installments that occur along the same streets where he takes his photographs. His pieces tend toward documentary studies of the relationship between individuals and society, and the power of the image to shape identity.

In his current project, Chinese-ness, Wing explores Chinese identity—the ways in which it is “personal, national, cultural, political”—and wonders: “Does it migrate, become malleable or transmuted? When is it authentic, sacred, exotic, kitsch?” In the I Am the Other series, Wing enters the lives of his subjects, Chinese men of his approximate age, living lives he might have lived. The resulting photographs produce a hypothetical memoir, a record of an alternate reality in which the contingencies of history have run a different course. The series is a visual-subjunctive meditation on the self. For a captured moment, Wing-as-he-is becomes Wing-as-he-might-have-been—and Wing-as-he-might-have-been comes into a kind of being. If photography invents the past, Chinese-ness gives it the chance as well to imagine—to image—other presents.

I first encountered Wing not long after moving to Minneapolis. He was shooting buckets at the Y. A year or so later, we were introduced by a mutual friend, and a few months after that I joined his church-basement pick-up game. For the next few years I played weekly with Wing and got to know him as an artist, a community-builder, and a friend—as well as a graceful player and deadly three-point shooter.

We met one morning at his gallery in south Minneapolis to talk about Chinese-ness. I’d been to The Third Place Gallery many times. Wing hosts a monthly event in which he brings in artists—filmmakers, musicians, and spoken word poets, as well as photographers—to present works in progress. Afterwards, wine is served, ping-pong is played, and karaoke is performed in the basement. I don’t know if Wing is just playing to his strengths with these choices of activities. He’s an ace ping-pong player and has mastered renditions of several songs, including Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ “Home” and “Your Song” from Moulin Rouge. The gallery takes its raison, as well as its name, from the work of sociologist Ray Oldenburg, who argued for the importance of a third environment away from home...