Images

24th More or Less~The Street Photographs

Coming to reside in Omaha in the early Nineties, it didn’t take long to notice the existence of a West versus East divide. I imagine this social dichotomy started some time earlier, what with aspects of “white flight” and the ever-westward expansion of the city. There were surely those of this earlier period, who found themselves no longer of West Omaha status, but now Central. And with Omaha’s continued expansion, I dare say they soon came to fall within the dreaded designation of East.
Considering the duality of Haves versus Have-nots and their respective location in city longitude, there is very little thought given to the nuances of where latitude places you. If we pick a longitude of say, 24th Street, and dismiss every aspect of the city beyond one block east or west of it, we acknowledge we are in East Omaha, but that our microcosm of the city is now oriented north to south. Drive the length from 24th & Read Street down past the Joslyn at Dodge Street, all the way to “U” Street, and you’ll find that that microcosm of Omaha is quite different from any representative north-south slice you might find at say, West Omaha’s 132nd Street.
Drive the length of 24th Street and you will not have passed through a more diversified spectrum of social strata and culture in all of Omaha. Walk out the doors of the Joslyn Museum and north up 24th Street past the affluent bounty of those at Creighton University, make your way under highway 480, and a few blocks later you’ll find yourself in another world. For about one half mile, you come upon a length of asphalt that the rest of Omaha would appear to have conveniently forgotten about. And yet there is community here. The inhabitants may not thrive, but they abide. There is hope. There is conviction to change.
Head south from the Joslyn and you will come to an area between Douglas and Leavenworth Streets that an acquaintance once bluntly referred to as “Freak Central”. Here you come to encounter all the sad detritus of society. Some of you may cringe at my use of such a phrase, but here on this length of sidewalk, you will find those who have given up on society to the same extent that society has given up on them. These denizens have indeed sunk low. Some of their descent has been done to them; some of it they’ve done to themselves. Here there is poverty. Here there is mental illness. Here there is drug abuse and alcoholism. Here there are predators and prostitutes. All only a short stroll from the Joslyn where for a brief period of the year low brow and high converge at “Jazz on the Green” to express their mutual indifference.
Head south on 24th and you pass into Little Mexico. A self-contained community of Hispanics who have revitalized a segment of South 24th by embracing community rather than pushing themselves away from each other. These people have grown together as a solid commonwealth because they need each other. Sadly, this is something we as privileged Americans would appear to have discarded.
So, why photograph 24th Street? Why devote so much time and effort, stroking film through a Leica, to capture images of a street that most would prefer pass blurred and unseen as they cross over by way of I-80 Interstate? Is such subject matter to be considered art and worthy of a moment’s contemplation?
In his treatise What Is Art?, Leo Tolstoy wrote, “In order to define art correctly, it is necessary first of all to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure, and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life.”
Here with these images, I give you conditions.

©05 Jack Hubbell