Top
A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

All photos and text © Bill Hess, unless otherwise noted 
All support is appreciated
Bill Hess's other sites
Search
Navigation
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.

Blog archive
Blog arhive - page view
« Keeping this blog alive and holding with Marilu Pai, a man from Mangalore, India, who I found at a bowhead whale landing on the Arctic sea ice | Main | Point Hope: coming home from whale camp »
Wednesday
May042011

Keeping this blog alive in a holding pattern with one pic of Chukchi Sea sunset

DateWednesday, May 4, 2011 at 6:00AM

The wind here in Point Hope has shifted to the west and south and is forecast to stay that way for four days. This brings the pack ice back, closes the lead, and pretty much brings the bowhead hunt to a pause until the wind shifts back to the Northeast.

As I am scheduled to leave here for Barrow Thursday, this means that I am probably done taking pictures at Point Hope whale camp for this year. It also meant that I found myself with a little time to do some blogging and so I decided that I would tough out this malfunctioning laptop computer screen and would put up a full blown post.

But when I tried, I just could not beat the screen. I could not edit the pictures. I simply could not tell enough about what I was looking at, so I gave up and just grabbed this one sunset-through-overcast-and-light-fog picture, which I took two nights ago, right about midnight, Alaska Daylight Savings Time.

Maybe after I get to Barrow, if I find the time, I can borrow a computer and do some serious editing. If not, then, except for "keeping this blog alive" single pic entries such as this, it will just have to wait until I get back to Wasilla in about one week.

Obviously, I need to do something about this screen. I had earlier taken it in to my local Mac store for an estimate and that came out to a bit over $500. I called Mac itself, and they said the odds were good that they would be able to replace it for their standard fee of $300 - which is also their minimum fee - but they could not say for certain until they checked it out.

It seemed to me that it would be better to put the $300 - $500 towards an iPad, which I could then use both as an iPad and as a screen for this laptop, rather than into this old laptop itself, but the full price of the iPad has eluded me so far - although I suspect that I have squandered more than enough money on breakfast, hamburgers, tacos and such since this malfunction began to have covered the full price and then some.

But I've got to do something. This is absurd. It really cripples me in the field.

Right now, this laptop is good for little other than serving as a data transfer and storage device. 

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment2 Comments |
in , , , ,

PrintView Printer Friendly Version

EmailEmail Article to Friend

Reader Comments (2)

Wow . . .

May 4, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterMelanie Montague

I had once commented on Charlie's pic that it was the best sunset pic I had seen! This also falls into the same category!!! Brilliant! Want to watch it live!!! :)

May 4, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterSuji

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Alert
Comment Moderation Enabled
Your comment will not appear until it has been cleared by a website editor.

Notify me of follow-up comments via email.