Artists & Communities Host Site: Flint Institute of Arts
1120 Kearsley Street
Flint, MI 48503
Web site: www.flintarts.org

Millennium Artist:
William L. Bamberger, Jr.
Photographer
North Carolina
E-mail: b.bam@mindspring.com
Web site: www.emji.net/bamberger

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

For over 19 years, Bill Bamberger has photographed Americans and the details and rhythms of their daily lives. His work often explores large social issues, including deindustrialization and urban renewal by revealing how these issues play out in families and communities.

In partnering with the Flint Institute of Arts in Michigan on an Artists & Communities residency, Bill Bamberger, the Institute, and students involved in the project did not want to focus on Flint as a dying industrial town. Rather, they wanted to show what was good about Flint, as well as present a positive view of Central High School—a “tough” inner city school that became the focus of the project—and its students.

The ensuing project, "Boys Will Be Men," addressed the fundamental issues of youth, gender and secondary education in America. Through the art of photography, Bill Bamberger carefully crafted a place for Flint within a larger national context, rather than singling the city out as alone in dealing with these fundamental issues.

As the project got underway, students posed tough questions to the artist, asking whether he planned to tell another story about dead-end kids in a dead-end town. While plant closings and job migration has had a huge impact in Flint, it is not the defining theme for many of the students. Rather, they see themselves as average kids with hopes and fears, not unlike teenagers in other mid-size cities across America. While students did not want to highlight the negative, they did want the photographs to be provocative, insightful and honest.

Throughout the residency, a core group of 20 students met twice a week with Bamberger to discuss the project and edit photographs. Students also leaned valuable skills by working with the artist to establish a darkroom at the school. They assisted on nearly every shoot from setting up lights, reviewing Polaroids, to taking turns behind the camera.

A formal exhibition of the photographs, selected from an archive of thousands, premiered at the school in conjunction with graduation in late May 2000. An audio narrative culled from the many interviews conducted during photography sessions accompanied the exhibit. The Flint Institute plans to curate a formal exhibition in May 2002. The photographs will ultimately be included in a publication bearing the name of the project.

Commenting on his residency, Millennium Artist Bill Bamberger said, "I believe there is a power in these images about boys coming of age, which will touch people well beyond the boundaries of Flint. Yet perhaps the greatest evaluation of our residency's success will come from the local community…."

MILLENNIUM ARTIST BIO

Bill Bamberger is a photographer and publisher whose work has been featured in one-person exhibitions at Yale University Art Gallery, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution. Bamberger is co-author of Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory.