Bill Tennessen is a self-taught photographer from Milwaukee. And while he wouldn’t call himself a professional, since 1981 he’s been contributing photographs to the Milwaukee Community Journal — Wisconsin’s largest African American newspaper.
A new exhibit called Dynamic Range at the Haggerty Museum of Art features Tennessen’s photographs that capture a range of local history. From Juneteenth celebrations, to Marquette and Bucks basketball games, the Ernest Lacy Inquest and visiting cultural and political figures, the exhibit documents Milwaukee’s Black community from the 1980s to the early 2000s.
Tennessen says his work with the Milwaukee Community Journal had a "soft start and then a harder start." He first began occasionally contributing photos to them of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee, the YWCA and other nonprofits. His work then picked up in 1981 with the Ernest Lacy inquest. Ernest Lacy was a 22 year old Black man who was killed in police custody after he was stopped by three Milwaukee police officers who claimed he fit the description of a rape suspect.
"Without any advance notification to the hearing people, I just showed up in the courtroom with a camera," recalls Tennessean. "The judge was quite upset with me. This was early on when they were first allowing cameras in court rooms, and he wasn't quite sure if I was allow to be there or not."
Retired circuit court judge Robert C. Cannon actually stopped the inquest, called Tennessen to his chambers and kicked him out. However, his time there proved valuable in the long run.
"They, of course, wanted photographs of the Lacey inquest. This was a very serious matter and I was able to provide photographs in the courtroom — not a lot of them, but some, but more importantly, later on in the street protests," says Tennessen.
With so many notable photos to choose from in Tennessen's collection of hundreds of thousands of negatives, narrowing the files down for exhibit selection was quite the task. Eventually, the material lent itself to the themes that are central in the exhibit: The Arts, Ernest Lacy, Juneteenth, Politicians/VIPs, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee, Community, Storefront Churches and Sports.
"We ultimately settled on these eight different themes and then did a small selection of photographs that fit with each of those themes. It it wasn't easy because there's just so much to choose from," explains Lynne Shumow, curator for academic engagement at the Haggerty Museum of Art.
"I think, ultimately the range of the photographs demonstrates different types of things. I wanted to show the joy in the Black community but I also wanted to make sure some of the challenges were highlighted. So, that's where you get these very different sort of themes represented," she adds.
Regarding the selection process, Tennessen notes, "There's two things I would like to say about the photographs. That is, every single one is just the way it was... And the other: the photographs where things that happened just as they happened. People would say, 'Take my photograph,' and this is the result of it. None of these were prepared for the show. These are just my file photographs, these are all vintage prints."
Now that the exhibit is on display, Tennessen hopes that his photos will have a similar lasting impact to the ones that he and others admired. "I sometimes in my mind compare ... the nature of my photographs with Walker Evans. Walker Evans was a street photographer back in the 1930s. He took photographs that anybody with a camera could've done, there's nothing special about them. But now, 80 years later they are really interesting to see what his cities that he visited looked like. And I like to think that maybe my photographs another 50 years from now have a similar feel for somebody to say, 'Wow, that's what it used to look like!'"
You can see "Dynamic Range: Photographs by Bill Tennessen" at the Haggerty Museum of Art on Marquette University's campus through May 12, 2024.
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