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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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Saturday
Mar072009

Iditarod began today, but here is a mask and a bride; tomorrow there will be dogs here

DateSaturday, March 7, 2009 at 11:16PM

I just returned home from Anchorage, where the Iditarod sort of began today and even though it is earlier than my normal bedtime, I am exhausted beyond all reason and want to do nothing but to go to bed.

Think how exhausted those mushers are going to become.

I did not go to Anchorage to see the ceremonial start, as I did not have time for it. I went to photograph a wedding. Before I got to the wedding, I stopped where the Iditarod began so that I could see my friend, Rose Albert, who had some of her paintings on display in a coffee shop on Fourth Avenue, right in front of the starting line.

I plan to see Rose again tomorrow, at the real Iditarod start in Willow and afterwards, I will put her on this blog. In 1982, she became the first Alaska Native woman ever to run the Iditarod.

After I said hi to her, I stopped to visit another friend, Othniel Oomittuk of Point Hope, who also had his artwork on display.

This mask represents Point Hope, the mountains nearby, and a rainbow that he once saw when he was atop those mountains. Look at the corners of the eyes, and you will see the tails of bowhead whales, upon which the whole culture and life of Point Hope is based.

I am not going to say much about Othniel right now, as I need to get to bed.

Sometime soon, I hope to go visit him and then I will put up more pictures and share a sliver of his story with you.

This is the bride, Emily Frantz of Barrow, who was about to become Emily Caldwell. I was going to post one scene from the actual ceremony, but the images are still downloading from the card and have not even reached the ceremony yet.

So, as quick as I could with no study to determine which was the best one, I grabbed this shot of the bride.

God, she's beautiful!

And so is her wedding parka, which she made herself from the skins of white rabbits and red foxes.

Let's get this straight - I am not a wedding photographer. I do not photograph weddings, except for photojournalistic purposes and, occasionally, very rarely, for a good friend or relative.

There is a story here to explain how I wound up photographing this wedding, and it involves airplanes and helicopters, cross-country flights across Alaska, search and rescue of lost and injured people in the Arctic, body recovery, polar bears, whales, and a grand trip across the Bering Sea into Russia.

All made with the father of groom, Chuck Caldwell, pilot  extraordinaire. 

Now I must go to bed.

If I can get there.

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