Seeing Students: Photo Project to Focus on Campus Life

Three Minnesota photographers will attempt to capture the essence of Carleton students and student life in a project taking place over the next four months. Angela Strassheim, Wing Young Huie, and a third photographer will immerse themselves in campus life from January to mid-April for the Vantage Points II project.

Young Huie is an award-winning photographer best known for his documentary projects charting the changing cultural landscape of Minnesota, his home state. These projects include “Frogtown: Photographs and Conversation in an Urban Neighborhood” (1996) and “Lake Street USA” (2001).

Strassheim, who earned an MFA at Yale after working as a forensic photographer in New York and Miami, is gathering acclaim for her representations of the Midwest and middle-class American families. Her “Left Behind” series, evoking the orderly but psychologically charged world of Midwestern born-again Christian families, appeared in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and at the Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College.

Vantage Points II follows a 2001-02 project in which photographers Alec Soth, Beth Dow and Chris Faust presented three very different interpretations of the Carleton campus as a physical place.

Their efforts resulted in a book, an exhibit in the Carleton Art Gallery, and a 2003 calendar. The 36 photos from that project are now part of the College’s permanent collection.

Soon after taking part in Vantage Points, Alec Soth hit the photographic big time with his “Sleeping by the Mississippi” project, which was featured in the Whitney Biennial and led to his being named an associate photographer of Magnum Photos. More recently his project “NIAGARA” received the 2006 Golden Light Book Award.

Both Vantage Points projects are co-sponored by the Art Gallery and the publications department.