Corey - For love and money: portraits of Wisconsin family businesses

FOR LOVE AND MONEY Portraits of Wisconsin Family Businesses CARL COREY WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESS Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press Publishers since 1855 Photographs 2014 by Carl Corey Foreword text on 2014 by Michael Perry Remaining text 2014 by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin E-book edition 2014 For permission to reuse material from For Love and Money (ISBN 978-0-87020-646-7, e-book ISBN 978-0-87020-647-4), please access www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users. wisconsinhistory.org Designed by Percolator 18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5 The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Corey, Carl. For love and money : portraits of Wisconsin family businesses / Carl Corey. paper) ISBN 978-0-87020-647-4 (ebook) 1. paper) ISBN 978-0-87020-647-4 (ebook) 1.

Family-owned business enterprisesWisconsinPictorial works. 2. WisconsinCommerceHistoryPictorial works. 3. Architectural photographyWisconsin. Title. Title.

HF3161.W6C67 2014 338.7dc23 2013035020 For Kay Corey, my wife and partner for over three decades CONTENTS A CKNOWLEDGMENTS ARE STRANGE THINGS. There are always so many folks involved in ones life that it is almost impossible to credit them for a singular result. Those of you who are my friends and family know who you are. I am the product of the relationships we have, and what I do is deeply influenced by you. For that I am most grateful. Appreciation is due the folks at the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, not only for their continued belief in my projects but also for the stellar work theyve done on my behalf.

A better team I cant envision. A particular callout to my editor, Kate Thompson, for your enduring respect and wonderful suggestions. Your work may be mostly behind the scenes, but it is essential to the success of the books we have done together. Thank you to Graeme Reid, my supporter and friend at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, for your continued support of the visual arts and all things Wisconsin. You see so well. Thank you to Michael Perry for your wonderful insight and for sharing your ability to string words together like no one else.

You are a true Wisconsin treasure. This project would never have been if it were not for the people in these pictures. I applaud you, your families, and your businesses. I know how hard you work and how dedicated you are. I hope you all are as proud of yourselves as you deserve to be. I thank you for your gracious willingness to participate in For Love and Money and wish you the best of continued success in your endeavors.

I LIKE KEEPING THINGS SIMPLE. Simple pictures, simple story, simple life. Simplicity provides clarity of vision. The criteria for this project were simple: Wisconsin family-owned businesses in existence a minimum of fifty years. Simple works for these pictures, because the stories behind them are not. All are steeped in history, love, family, business, and community.

Each of those threads is complex on its own; taken together they become a maze. The family businesses portrayed here have lived and evolved over a minimum of fifty years, against all the odds of survival. The owners remain loyal to their companies, their families, and themselves. They weather tough economic times and big-business competition. Here they are, ready to serve you and proud to do so. Here they are in their commitment, dedication, and perseverance.

Here they are, pure and simple. Carl Corey, 2014 by Michael Perry H AVING MET NEITHER THE SUBJECTS nor the photographer of For Love and Money, I have viewed these portraits with no prior knowledge save the fact that each image represents a family-owned business that has survived for at least fifty years. Survived. If ever there was a singular synopsis of what it is to survive as a small family-owned business, see the shoe-sellers portrait on . Take a moment to count the boxes. Understand that the boxes depart the store only one pair of feet at a time; then consider what it takes to divert those feet through your front door in the first place.

Next, visualize the net profit per shoe as loose change rattling in each shoebox. Now imagine shaking the money out of box after box, cents on the dollar, time after time, until youve paid the rent, the heat, the health insurance, the grocery bill, bought your own kids shoes... Here is the secret to successful self-employment, a man once told me. Wake up scared every morning. It would be overdramaticand insultingto say the photographs in this book are populated by fearful eyes, but I believe I can respectfully state these are eyes leached of all entrepreneurial illusion. L OOKING AT C ARL C OREYS photograph of a worn United States flag hanging above a fresh white set of home appliances, I am reminded that here in America we fetishize the concept of the individual, andas a subcategory of the samelaud small business, a habit of approbation so inborn that we can sing it even while sailing freely past Mom and Pop and their outdated cash register and arrive at the megastore with coupons and a clear conscience, knowing the washers and dryers are cheaper there.

Nowhere is individualism touted more than in advertisements, in which the much-coveted status is achieved by purchasing a lot of just the right thing, be it a slimmer phone, a sleeker car, or slimmer and sleeker themselves. Carl Coreys photos are a useful corrective in this regard, because he too is bringing us images of individualism, but rather than purchasing their individuality at retail, his subjects have laid their own tails on the line while crossing their fingers its not a railroad track. In popular culture, individualism and success are often portrayed with an air of insufferable exhilaration. The individualism in For Love and Money has a firmer set to its jaw. These are people who know what it is to be in charge of the inventory and the broom. See the image of the store owner with the empty shopping cart, standing in an aisle stacked floor to ceiling on either side with colorful games, crafts, and puzzles? Follow the linear perspective of the laden shelves and note the point of convergence: the man himself.

In part this is Carl Corey knowing how to place his subject. But mostly this is the way it is. Carl Coreys photos capture the pride of the small-time business owner, yes, and well-earned, but also the haunt of working small in a country that loves to praise the little guy even as it happily hands over more and more territory to the big boys, and furthermore forms human bridges to help the cummerbund bunch safely to dock when the yachts take on water. Coreys pictures present the faces of people who have learned to count on nothing. Who know what it is to work without a net, with the constant awareness that at this level there will be no bailouts beyond your own bucket, so pack your own parachute, no matter that it might be little more than a single white handkerchief waving goodbye. In photo after photo, you see the price of going it alone.

W ELL, SHOOT. In my determination to read these photographs deeply and properly honor the entrepreneurial pluck of their subjects, I fear I have failed to convey the fact that this book is a testament suitable to be read as something other than scripture for a wake. Fifty years: you do not stay in business for that long without success. Perhaps not jet-set success, or recession-proof success, or even ride-a-used-golf-cart-into-the-sunset success, but success nonetheless. Thus in many of these faces you see satisfaction. Not smugness, nothing that will leap boldly off the corporate brochure, just some quiet knowledge that certain virtueshard work, perseverance, loyaltyare yet extant despite all postmodern cynicism and irony, and despite all post-postmodern candy-floss paeans to the same in any given kitty litter commercial.