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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 Hunters (36)

Wednesday
Apr222009

Two people from past covers of Uiñiq Magazine

DateWednesday, April 22, 2009 at 11:22PM

I visited Makalik tonight - at 34, the youngest whaling captain in Barrow and also an individual who has spoken out in public about suicide, something that has struck very close to Makalik. His words will appear in the special Uiñiq that I am working on.

In this small space, I will note that Makalik gives his wife, Tina, credit for helping him through the darkness that all this brought upon his own life, to manifest itself in drug and alcohol abuse, and that she did that by helping him burst the bubble in which he kept all the pain trapped inside and let him release it.

To both keep the past alive and protect the future, he counsels that not only should we honor and listen to the Elders, but that we should sit down with the young as well and listen - really listen - to what they say.

Makalik holds Hunter, his seven week old son.

"I love to hunt," he explains, "to provide for the people. I love it. I hope that he will do the same thing that I do, provide for the people."

As for the scabs on Makalik's face, that is frostbite, earned while driving a snowmachine across the tundra to get caribou, to provide for the people.

Around here, such scabs are a mark of honor.

This is also Makalik - from the first time that I photographed him in May of 1985. I put him on the cover of the very first issue of Uiñiq magazine that I made. This framed version hangs in his house. It makes me feel good when I see something like that. When I took the pictures for that Uiñiq, I was the same age that he is now.

Yet, sometimes, it feels like it happened pretty recently.

If you think about it, even when a very, very old man lays down upon his bed to face his death, even his birth remains just a recent thing.

When Ruby Aiken Donovan was a very small girl, she appeared on the cover of another Uiñiq, as a flower girl at her Aunt Anna's wedding. A while back, I photographed Ruby's wedding to Quuniq Donovan, who holds their baby on in the picture behind her.

Yes, they will be in the next Uiñiq, too. I used to do Uiniq all the time.

Now, I only do it every now and then.

I called the first issue, "The Open Lead." The second one became Uiñiq - The Open Lead, but it time I dropped the English words and just kept the Iñupiaq, which means the same thing.

As for the fact that both of today's subjects appeared on past covers of Uiñiq, it is pure coincidence. I did not plan it all. I sought them out not for the past, but for what they do now and it just turned out that way.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment8 Comments |
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