Minneapolis photographer Laura Migliorino began taking photos of the suburbs as an outgrowth of her daily commute to Coon Rapids, where she has been on the art faculty at Anoka-Ramsey Community College for 20 years.

"At first, I was just photographing the architecture. The rapid expansion just started to blow me away," she said. "Honest to God, I would drive up to work on a Thursday, and then I would drive back the next week and there would be something [new] there that wasn't there [earlier]."

But over time, Migliorino became as fascinated with the stories of the people in those "instant" neighborhoods, particularly in recent years as Twin Cities suburbs have grown more diverse and are more resonant of the classic American immigrant story.

It's a story that Migliorino had a taste of growing up as the granddaughter of Italian immigrants in the Chicago area.

Migliorino's photo series, "The Hidden Suburbs: A Portrait," juxtaposes images of diverse families against the more homogenous housing stock typical of most 'burbs. The photos are layered with other images -- a traffic snarl, empty fields -- that suggest other aspects of the suburban experience, past and present.

One of the photos in the series, called "Egret Street" and depicting an Ethiopian family in Coon Rapids, was recently purchased for the permanent collection of the Walker Art Center.

Q You've been teaching all this time in Coon Rapids, doing a reverse commute up to the northern suburbs, and you haven't yet moved there.

A Absolutely not. No. It was a big leap to move from Chicago to Minneapolis, particularly back in the '80s. But it grew up and I've toned down, so we've kind of come to this reconciliation.

Q I imagine the contrast between urban and suburban, particularly for someone from ... Chicago, can be somewhat alienating.

A Yeah, it is. To me, I have a mix of disgust and fascination with the place. ... Two of the images I photographed were in this subdivision [in Blaine] called Club West. ... There is something so wonderfully uniform and clean and fresh and American about it that I just love -- and that I'm alternately terrified of.

Q Especially a place such as Club West, which is very highly designed.

A Particularly Club West, yeah. And there was another subdivision I photographed right off of Hwy. 10 in Shoreview. ... I photographed that at length and it was so beautifully ornamented and designed and so clean.

Q So you started out taking photographs of suburban locales, barren of people. ... And then you began getting to the humanity there.

A After a couple of years of wandering around various subdivisions ... it came to me: Who lives here? I was kind of dumb about the whole thing. Then I realized: Oh, wait, I know who lives here. I work with them. They're my students. I know these people, and they're not all -- the whole project was me challenging my own prejudice and assumptions about a place.

Q And they are deeply ingrained prejudices, especially if all the people you know and socialize with are urbanites, yes?

A Right. And my assumption was that all the suburbs, particularly the outer-ring suburbs, are all white, evangelical, Republican. That's all that's out there, and they all hate me. And then I realized: Well, no, that's not true. I know people who live in the suburbs and they are not all white and conservative. There is a hidden diversity and it's growing at a rapid clip.

Q It sounds like you kind of started off with an attitude that the suburbs are exotic.

A Yeah, to me it was sort of exotic, even though I grew up in the suburbs. But I grew up in an industrial suburb of Chicago. ...We had, I can't tell you, how many languages. Lots of African-Americans. I was bused into a Jewish high school. So all of Minnesota was alien to me.