cover image Lake Street USA

Lake Street USA

Wing Young Huie. University of Minnesota Press, $16 (236pp) ISBN 978-1-886913-47-9

In 2000, photographer Wing Young Huie displayed hundreds of photo-portraits along a six-mile stretch of Minneapolis's Lake Street, a major artery connecting neighborhoods with vastly different ethnicities, cultures, religions and tastes. In the book based on the exhibit, Lake Street USA, a Pentecostal Hmong minister appears under the same cover as a punk rocker with a black eye; a Cameroonian record shop owner; an Egyptian former teacher who now washes dishes at the Hyatt; a predominantly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christian congregation; and a hippie on a nature walk with his kids in the back alleys of the city. Statements from many of the photographs' subjects flesh out this portrait of urban American life. It's hard to imagine a more public art. ( Feb.)