Get to know Pam Dusbabek

“When I tell people I’m from Red Wing, the response is always positive.” That’s what Pam Dusbabek says of the town she’s lived in since 2002. For the last six years, Pam has worked as Red Wing Downtown Main Street’s Social Media and Marketing Manager, and she says it has “turned out to be the best job I’ve ever had.”

This comes after years working as a documentary photographer, taking photos of families, something she still loves to do. She is now DTMS’s resident photographer, so here she is talking about ten of her favorite photos from her time with the organization.  

I know you said you prefer documentary photography to any posed photography. What is it about that type of photography that you like so much?

It’s the observation of human behavior. I’m fascinated with human behavior. In our society, a camera makes us put on a mask or a persona. It’s the Instagram-ready idea. Documentary photography takes all that out of it and all you’re left with is the real moments. It cuts through all the posed show-who-you-want-to-be-seen-as, and it shows the real moments of human behavior.

With that photo in particular, I’ll be honest, when I saw the old man sitting there I was going to take a picture of him, and I saw the boys coming up on their bike, and I was like, “I hope they’re nice to him,” because you just don’t know. And they stopped and they were chatting and the guy was laughing and the kids were laughing and then they did a magic trick, it was just this magical feeling of such different generations coming together. It was so great.

This next one's a photo of an adult and a child enjoying the fairy gardens from the First Annual Fairy Fest.

This one I loved because as we were planning the Fairy Fest the idea of gender equality got brought up a lot. “Should we change the name? We want to make sure that all boys and girls feel comfortable coming.” So we were really concerned that it was just going to be all girls. So the fact that we saw so many generations there, and then this was a little boy dressed in the fairy wings, it just felt like, “Yes! Let’s let little boys participate in activities that aren’t stereotypically boy activities.”

Here's another picture of a parent and a child enjoying the Fairy Fest.

I love when adults can be silly. We are taught to unlearn how to be silly and so my favorite thing in life is when I catch adults being silly or participating in silliness.

On that note, a lot of your past photo work has specifically been of families, what is about photographing a family that you enjoy?

There’s endless opportunity for moments of connection. It’s the moments of connection that were too busy to even see. It’s the sharing a silly activity together, it’s that look you give your kid when they say something funny, it’s the way that they mimic their parents’ behavior. It just fascinates me.

Here’s another family photo.

That’s [Downtown Main Street’s Events & Outreach Coordinator Molly Langer] and her kid. This is one of those hidden moments of connection that as parents or as onlookers we miss. We were walking downtown, work-related, and her kids were out with their babysitter, and when her daughter saw her, she lit up and ran to her mom. My kids are out of the house now, but that just brought back so much of how our kids are always loving us, we really are the heroes of their whole life. Molly might as well have been Taylor Swift in that moment. Eventually that goes away, and people forget to enjoy that while they have it.

It's nice being able to capture that.

I feel like it’s appropriate that it happened downtown. It’s the same thing for our downtown. We forget to have gratitude for what we have, until we don’t have it anymore.

This picture foregrounds the family relationship, but in the background you have the flower basket, the Sheldon, and so on.

This is such a small little moment, that’s so special, but one day when you don’t have it, it’s one of the biggest. You feel that same way about downtown Red Wing. I’ve traveled to other small towns and, yes, there are shops and historic buildings, but it doesn’t feel connected, and I really, really want people to feel connected with downtown, because I feel that.

This picture is of some visitors from a Mississippi River cruise. What is it about the Mississippi that you think adds to downtown?

The broader spectrum of people who may have not heard of Red Wing, they’ve obviously heard of the Mississippi River. People who might not have heard of Red Wing, have access to Red Wing. It’s like a little portal.

That group of ladies was so fun, they were from Texas and they would not stop talking about how much fun they were having in town. I just wish people who actually lived here felt that same way about it instead of complaining all the time.

As one of those people who did complain at different points in life…

We all have.

What’s going on here?

That is Anna at Simple Abundance. I was out taking pictures of fairy houses for the Fairy Fest and I was photographing theirs and I didn’t even notice her in the background, and then when I noticed her I laughed and took a picture of her. I was like “If this doesn’t sum up why I love our downtown business owners, I don’t know what does.” The willingness to put yourself out there and be judged but taking it in stride and having fun with it, and then making it feel like such a friendly place to be. That could have gone a lot of ways, a store owner could have looked out their window and scowled at me, like “What are you doing?” but instead she made the best of it and made it so silly.

This is the Business Development Committee with matching shirts. What is about Downtown Main Street that you feel that connection to these other people?

I didn’t have a lot of knowledge or connection to anything downtown prior to working with Downtown Main Street, but what I learned when I started working for them was how close everyone actually was. I had no idea that the business owners really did work together a lot and share ideas. The shirts were because Andrea’s [Andrea Hanson, Chair of the Business Development Committee] sister had a brain tumor and was having surgery so she got these shirts to sell as a fundraiser. At the time my mother-in-law had died, so I wasn’t able to get a shirt, I was kind of lost in my own grief, and when I showed up at the next meeting and every single person was wearing one of those shirts at a time when I felt really alone I was reminded that people still come together and support each other. It was really special to see. Even the men, it looks like a stereotypically female shirt, but the men even were like, I’m going to wear this proudly for my friend. That was the visual epitome of how the downtown business owners are with each other.

The dog in the window…

Okay. I freaking love dogs. Almost as much as I love little bits of connection. I love it when businesses have shop dogs because it tells me, number one, that they’re dog people so they are my people. This was particularly interesting because it’s an insurance place, so it’s the least likely place you’re going to find a shop dog. It was such a juxtaposition of this professional insurance place and this mopey dog. It’s the first time I’ve ever been like, “I think I want to go into an insurance company.”

The next one is another animal one, a llama or alpaca or something.

I just told you little bits of moments and connection are my jam. So when I saw these girls coming up to the llamas I was really watching them, because they’re in the prime age of masking their joy and silliness that we learn to outgrow as humans. They fully embraced the silly of it all and I just felt like that energy in that photo was exactly the kind of energy we were going with the Holiday Stroll. After so many complaints about the theme and the buttons, that picture was a win. That was our goal the whole time. Our goal is not to make people mad. Our goal is to have fun and bring joy to the town.

How about this last picture?

That was when we were trying to think, “What’s the best way forward that benefits everyone in the city and not just the stuff that we’re working on?” We really want to be collaborative so we reached out to the Visitors & Convention Bureau and the Chamber of Commerce and earlier last year we met at Sargent’s and potted plants, so we could be comfortable working with each other instead of against each other. This one we went to Red Wing Arts and we made clay fairy houses. All of us were making our little pieces separately and then bringing them together to make the whole scene, and isn’t that point? We’re all working on our individual projects that eventually get put together into one scene.

That’s probably a perfect metaphor to end on.