'Fargo Street' photography book aims to showcase downtown Fargo, Moorhead
Instead of chasing inspiration, photographer W. Scott Olsen prefers to take a seat on a park bench and wait for inspiration to come to him.
“It’s just like hunting and fishing. You either walk around a lot in the case of hunting, or you fish; you sit down and you wait for the world to find you,” the local photographer and Concordia College professor said of his big passion: street photography.
Olsen is the author of the recently released “ Fargo Street, ” a coffee table collection of black-and-white street photography depicting people and places that make Fargo, the city deemed “North of Normal,” a macrocosm of human connection. The book is available at Barnes and Noble, local booksellers and online.
“Fargo Street” features images of people from all walks of life, including a Broadway busker singing his heart out from his truck bed, as well as a smoking couple living their best lives outside of an ice cream parlor. Other images represent the absurdity of the weather in these parts, with people skating on ice and someone else trying to (unsuccessfully) scrape ice from their windshield.
In short, there is something for everyone in “Fargo Street” that both celebrates Fargo-Moorhead and calls into question what makes the region visually compelling.
“Fargo is a really cool size,” Olsen said. “We’re not New York, nor are we [as small as] Felton, N.D., so I made an intentional project to use the street photography approach to try and find something true about Fargo.”
Olsen was drawn to the style of street photography because it allowed him to share a story in a more documentary way that other styles of photography can’t do.
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“It’s more implication than explication,” he said, explaining his preference for black and white, too. “What do you see in these faces and images that speaks to humanity? That’s one of the reasons I prefer black and white. Color tends to really locate an image more specifically in time. Black and white isn’t timeless — that sounds like a compliment — but it’s removed from dates. The fact that we take the timeliness out of it is something that appeals to me.”
A writer by trade, Olsen hasn’t always been as interested in photography as he is now.
“I’m in phased out retirement, which means I have less of a teaching load and more time to work on my creative passions,” he said, adding that his photography practice, particularly the street photography genre, has been a huge focus for the past several years. “I am filling every moment I have with my creative work, so it’s busier than you’d think.”
Olsen is a 2024 Individual Artist grantee of The Arts Partnership, which awarded him funding to work on a photo project that took him to Paris just after the 2024 Olympics in August. There, he watched the world go by, snapping photos of daily life in Paris that isn’t always in the guidebooks.
“The cool thing about it is that everyone has photographed Paris, but the question is always, ‘How do I say something fresh and original?’” Olsen said.
Like “Fargo Street,” the Paris project is more of a moment in time than anything. “My project is a narrative of three days. I’m not trying to get at the historic depth and the overarching metaphoric meaning of Paris. I just want people to look at one very defined period of time,” he said.
“Fargo Street” is without textual narration of any kind, giving the viewer carte blanche to decide what each photo means to them and how it defines their external worlds. Olsen said a majority of subjects he photographed for the series didn’t know they were being photographed, and if they did, “they don’t know they’re in this book … yet,” he said.
It’s an ethical implication he doesn’t take lightly. As a communications and writing professor, Olsen is versed in the legalities of photographing street art without explicit permission from the subjects.
“The law is very simple. I’m not out to get anybody. So the first thing I have in the back of my head is that I love this town and I’m going to treat it with respect. That doesn’t mean a sentimental whitewashing of problems, but I’m not only going to look for the worst,” he said.
Even so, Olsen is curious to know the reactions of people who ended up in his collection. What will they think? What will they say?
“What I’m really waiting for is a number of people who are in the book to know I took their pictures,” he said.
Olsen hopes Fargo-Moorhead residents will give the book to friends and family in other areas of the world. “We don’t think an image of a snow drift is interesting, necessarily, but they [people not from the area] do,” he said.
Ultimately, though, “Fargo Street” has become a true representation of the community Olsen has called home since he started working at Concordia in 1987.
“This is where I live,” he said. “It’s a really interesting place.”
Purchase “Fargo Street” online for $45, or purchase at a local bookseller.
About the author
Lonna Whiting is a freelance writer and owner of lonna.co, a content marketing and communications agency located in Fargo, North Dakota. She is a frequent contributor to The Arts Partnership’s content library and also provides strategic communications consultation to the organization.
