When John Shimon and Julie Lindemann moved back to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, three years ago, they brought with them a decade of acquired urban crust, tens of thousands of photographs, and enough secondhand stuff to fill a warehouse. Fortunately, they moved into a warehouse.
The record got a better reception than they did, and it sold a whole 12 copies. It was 1982, and New York was in the midst of a real estate boom that helped turn thousands of city people into street people. Fresh from the dairy land, John and Julie quickly discovered that New York was not an affordable town, so they settled across the harbor, in a fleabag apartment in Jersey City. They were lying in bed contemplating the view one day when the door swung open and the landlord burst in. He glanced at their meager furnishings and muttered, “I didn’t want people like these,” and slammed the door on his way out. He raised the rent soon after.
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They lasted a year in the New York area, then picked up and moved back closer to home, to Milwaukee. They took thousands of photographs, they gathered more degrees. They became well-known there. Because they were the only photographic team of note on the art scene, art critics referred to them as “the dynamic duo” and “Schmindemann.” They took photographs obsessively, of their friends in the art world and of strangers who became friends. They ranged coastal Wisconsin, though not as far north as Manitowoc, seeking and finding the extravagantly odd, the grotesque, and just plain folks. They documented everyone and everything. When they weren’t taking pictures they wandered through thrift shops and rummage sales, never going home without at least a little something. Their Milwaukee apartment was jammed like a subway at rush hour. The walls were closing in when they heard about a sweet deal in Normal, Illinois.
The low cost was the engine that drove them back, but it wasn’t the whole train. Manitowoc had its own allure. Its decay appealed to their aesthetic sense, and the area had shaped them as kids. They were familiar with the obsessions of the people behind the farmhouse and ranch-house facades and had returned to their background again and again for inspiration. The building had a storefront window, and with a whole warehouse they could have their own studio, even their own gallery. It wasn’t so far from Milwaukee that they couldn’t commute to part-time jobs teaching photography at the University of Wisconsin there, but it wasn’t anywhere near close enough to be called a suburb. Manitowoc had an identity of its own.
Through one photo subject, a resident of a nearby town called Saint Nazianz, John and Julie were introduced to Elvis Presley. He lived in Valders, another town nearby.
The Music Bar was a strip joint, owned by a man named Ray who played the organ and sang dirty songs from World War II while dancers strolled the bar in G-strings, getting dollar bills from the men for a feel and a lick. “People are so cheap here,” Julie commented. They became bar regulars.
After two and a half years in Manitowoc, John and Julie’s warehouse renovation was nearly done. They had a comfortable living space that held all their stuff, they had the studio. They didn’t have a working TV and didn’t want one; a thrift-shop version decorated their living room. But they still hadn’t opened the gallery.
