Art: Main Street photographer

For more than 40 years Tom Arndt has trained his Leica MP on his fellow Minnesotans at work and play, especially at the State Fair, in small-town diners, parades and high school gyms. He loves fireworks and the fair's midway, threshing crews, cabbies, commuters, construction workers, cars with tailfins and kids on bikes.

He's traveled the world and photographed pretty much everywhere. He even lived for 17 years in Chicago, but his heart was always in Minnesota. This is home, he says, the place where he learned to make "honest images about shared experience."

His new book, "Home," is full of photos of Minnesotans, as is his show opening Saturday at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Excerpts from a recent conversation with Arndt:

Q You grew up in south Minneapolis and graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design [BFA, 1968] and the University of Minnesota [MFA, 1970]. How did you get started in this photography business?

A My mom was a clerk at Roosevelt High School and dad was an auto mechanic. In the summers I had to go to Bible school at Holy Trinity Lutheran, and our teacher set up a darkroom in the church basement. I remember going in to make a print, and seeing that image come up was magic. I was 9 years old and it was an epiphany. Whudda thunk it?

After college I taught at MCAD from 1971 to 1974 and then worked at the Walker as a staff photographer from 1975 to 1981. Then Martin [Friedman, the Walker's director] basically said, "You need to go be an artist." He said it in a nice way, and he was right. I needed to do that. I'd had a show at Ivan Carp's O.K. Harris gallery in New York and had done a couple projects for the New York Times. So after I left Walker, I got a little darkroom at 700 N. Washington in Minneapolis and started traveling around the country, taking pictures.

Q How did you support yourself?

Q Your new book and show have lots of photos of people. But not many or them are at sporting events or work. Why is that?

A I've done a lot of pictures of state basketball tournaments and homecoming games and social protests, everything from the Vietnam War to farm foreclosures, but the book and show were getting so huge we had to eliminate stuff.

Q Some of the photos are from the 1970s and some from last year. How do they fit together?

A Sometimes I realized I was holding this little bit of time and space from 40 years ago and that it could be yesterday. I like being able to go back and forth like that in time. Some pictures are completely dated to their place and time, but a lot of them are timeless. When you get outside of Minneapolis and St. Paul, time slows down, which is cool. I like that. People stick to their traditions. They always have Kolacky Days in Montgomery and the ice house parade up in Aitkin.

Q Who are your photographic influences?

I'm real chaotic. Whatever is out there I will photograph if it has meaning to me. As a documentary street photographer, I don't go out there to impose my will. You have to accept the chaos and opportunity of whatever is there.

Q What's up next for you?

A I may do some more traveling, probably to Mexico City. I'm waiting to hear about funding for a book about my 17 years in Chicago. And I enjoy photographing in North Dakota. Sue has a lot of relatives there and it's a beautiful landscape. The first picture the Museum of Modern Art ever bought from me was a 1981 night landscape from the middle of North Dakota. When you're in the country with no city lights around, the landscape under a full moon is bathed in the most beautiful silvery light you can imagine. And I'm looking forward to wandering around Minnesota, too.

Mary Abbe • 612-673-4431