For more than thirty-five years, celebrated photographer Wing Young Huie has captured the complex cultural realities of American society. He has exhibited nationally and internationally—more than half a million people viewed his traveling exhibit in China—but his best known works, Lake Street USA and the University Avenue Project, were epic public art projects that transformed Twin Cities’ thoroughfares into six-mile galleries, reflecting the everyday lives of thousands of its residents. The StarTribune named Wing Artist of the Year in 2000, stating, “Lake Street USA is likely to stand as a milestone in the history of photography and public art.” In 2018 he was honored with the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award. Chinese-ness: The Meanings of Identity and the Nature of Belonging (MHS Press, 2018) is his seventh and most personal book: “I am the youngest of six and the only one in my family not born in China. Instead, I was conceived and oriented in Duluth, Minnesota. So what am I? How does my Chinese-ness collide with my Minnesota-ness and my American-ness? And who gets to define those abstract hyphenated nouns?”

Photo by Steve Bye