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A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

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Wasilla

Wasilla is the place where I have lived for the past 29 years - sort of. The house in which my wife and I raised our family sits here, but I have made my rather odd career as a different sort of photojournalist by continually wandering off to other places to photograph people and gather information, which I have then put together in various publications that have served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communities.

Although I did not have a great of free time to devote to this rather strange community, named after a Tanaina Athabascan Indian chief who knew Wasilla in the way that I so impossibly long to, I have still documented it regularly over the past quarter-century plus. In the early days, my Wasilla photographs focused mostly upon my children and the events they participated in - baseball, football, figure skating, hockey, frog catching, fire cracker detonation, Fourth of July parade - that sort of thing. 

In 2002, I purchased my first digital camera and then, whenever I was home, I began to photograph Wasilla upon a daily basis, but not in a conventional way. These were grab shots - whatever caught my eye as I took my many long walks or drove through the town, shooting through the car window at people and scenes that appeared and disappeared before I could even focus and compose in the traditional photographic way.

Thus, the Wasilla portion of this blog will be devoted both to the images that I take as I wander about and those that I have taken in the past. Despite the odd, random, nature of the images, I believe they communicate something powerful about this town that I have never seen expressed anywhere else. 

Wasilla is a sprawling community that has been slapped down hodge-podge upon what was so recently wilderness of the most exquisite beauty. In its design, it is deliberately anti-zoned, anti-planned. In the building of Wasilla, the desire to make a buck has trumped aesthetics and all other considerations. This town, built in the midst of exquisite beauty, has largely become an unsightly, unattractive, mess of urban sprawl. Largely because of this, it often seems to me that Wasilla is a community with no sense of community, a town devoid of town soul.

Yet - Wasilla is my home and if I am lucky it will be until I grow old and die. Despite its horrific failings, it is still made of the stuff of any small city: people; moms and dads, grammas and grampas, teens, children, churches, bars, professionals, laborers, soldiers, missionaries, artists, athletes, geniuses, do-gooders, hoodlums, the wealthy, the homeless, the rational and logical, the slightly insane and the wholly insane - and, yes, as is now obvious to the whole world, politicians, too.

So perhaps, if one were to search hard enough, it might just be possible to find a sense of community here, and a town soul. So, using my skills as a photojournalist and a writer, I hope to do just that. If this place has a sense of community, I will find it. If there is a town soul to Wasilla, I will document it. I won't compete with the newspapers. Hell no! But as time and income allow, it will be fun to wander into the places where the folks described above gather, and then put what I find on this blog.

 

by 300...

Anywhere within a 300 mile radius of Wasilla. This encompasses perhaps the most wild, dramatic, gorgeous, beautiful section of land and sea to be found in any comparable space anywhere on Earth. I can never explore it all, but I will do the best that I can, and will here share what I find and experience with you.  

and then some...

Anywhere else in the world that I happen to get to, such as Point Lay, Alaska; Missoula, Montana; Serenki, Chukotka, Russia; or Bangalore, India. Perhaps even Lagos, Nigeria. I have both a desire and scheme to get me there. It is a long shot. We shall see if I succeed.

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Tuesday
Nov182008

With the temperature near 0˚ F, boy clutches his harp seal pup doll

DateTuesday, November 18, 2008 at 11:55PM

Boy standing with woman on a corner of Lucille Street holds fur seal pup doll. Taken in driver's side rearview mirror with Canon Powershot G9 pocket camera, during brief pause at stop sign.

 

I love to blog, but it is taking up too much of my time, even though I have so far only pursued the tiniest fraction of the goals that I set for myself at the outset of this journal. I intend to reach those goals, but first I must find some way to free up more of my time and this will be a huge challenge for me.

In the meantime, I will keep this blog up, but will scale it back. I will post just as often - perhaps every day or just about every day, but most days, only one photo, or maybe two: one taken the day of posting and another from the past, before I started the blog. I was going to do it that way today, but I haven't the time to dig up a photo from the past, even though it would not take me long to do so.

There was a beautiful moon out when I took my morning walk, and I took several photos of it as it hung up in the clear, cold, crisp, blue sky and it was my intent to use one of those photos here. In my mind, I had already picked out a moon shot from the past to match up with it, but then this boy showed up for about three seconds in my rear-view mirror and so I decided to use this image of him and his doll instead.

Occasionally, perhaps once a week, I will still make more extensive posts. If I can find the time (and that looks impossible for at least through the winter) I would still like to shoot a genuine picture story that I actually plan and pursue now and then. To reach my goals with this blog, I must ultimately do this. Even when I find the time to do so, I will continue to photograph the random images that appear before me whenever I roam Wasilla, or any other place that I happen to go, and I will put them in the blog.

I have spent too much time explaining this. I have other work that I must do. I must go now.

Remember, a click on the photo produces a larger image.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment3 Comments |

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Reader Comments (3)

Sorry to hear you're scaling this blog back. I've only been following it a short while, but I find it inspiring. The photos are great and the writing is too. I'll have to start going back through the archives to get my daily fix :-)

November 20, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterPhil Reaston

Thanks, Phil.

Maybe I can better discipline myself, and not scale back as much as it feels to me I must. What I actually want to do is to expand. Sooner or later. Keep dropping by. I will get there.

November 20, 2008 | Registered CommenterWasilla, Alaska, by 300

I like your idea of posting a photo from today and one from the past. My two cents.

November 22, 2008 | Unregistered Commenternina

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