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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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Entries in hair cut (1)

Friday
Jul102009

Shaggy man comes to Barrow to get haircut

DateFriday, July 10, 2009 at 10:40PM

I arrived in Barrow as the shaggy man. I had intended to get a haircut from Celia in Wasilla before I left, but at no point in my final week there could I find 30 minutes to go see her - 45 counting the drive there and back. So I went to Point Lay shaggy, hung out shaggy in Wainwright but after I got to Barrow and started chewing on my mustache with every bite, I decided I had better do something about it.

So I wound up on a chair at Barrow Search and Rescue alongside Johnny Adams, who agreed to do the job. It was Roy Ahmaogak who suggested Johnny and it was mighty wise advice.

Here is the "before" shot that I took in another one of my abolutely brilliant self-portraits.

You can see that Johnny looks a little worried. He knows that I want to look good when the job is done, and he is not certain such a thing is even possible, no matter how excellent a job he does.

Bravely, he begins to cut.

I must note that Johnny is a guitar player and singer and he does his own, Iñupiaq version of Woody Guthrie's "This land is your land, this land is my land..." but he does not sing about places like California and the New York Islands, but rather places like Point Barrow, Barter Island, Point Hope and the Brooks Range Mountains.

I have been to parties where he sang that song. Everbody goes wild. They really like it.

As the boys play cards in the back room, he trims my beard and mustache. 

The challenge before Johnny is enormous. He attacks it from all angles.

There is no mirror nearby, so, when the job is done, I have to take another brilliant self-portrait as an "after" shot and then look at the monitor on my pocket camera to see how he did.

Damn! What a handsome devil!

Two handsome devils!

Johnny Adams, you are a genius!

Last time I was in New York City, I dropped into the Worldwide Institute of Master Photographers to see if they would accept me into their ranks.

"No," they said, in collective arrogance. "You will never be a master photographer until you have photographed yourself getting your hair cut by a musician. Frankly, Wasilla boy, we do not think you have the skills to take on such a challenge."

So I think I will email the link to this blog to the Master Photographers and see if they will accept me now.

If this doesn't prove to them that I have the skills to photograph myself getting a haircut from a musician - an Inupiaq musician, no less and I don't think any of them have even accomplished this - then I don't know what will.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment3 Comments |
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