Gib Ahlstrand stands in front of some of the photos he took of Cherokee Heights kids in 1973, currently on display at Amore Coffee in West St. Paul, on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. Ahlstrand was in college when he took the photos and is now looking for someone to identify the kids. (Kathy Berdan / Pioneer Press)

This is one of the photos Gib Ahlstrand took of Cherokee Heights kids in August 1973. Ahlstrand was in college when he took the photos and is now looking for someone to identify the kids. The photos are on display at Amore Coffee in West St. Paul. (Courtesy of Gib Ahlstrand)

This is one of the photos Gib Ahlstrand took of Cherokee Heights kids in August 1973. The photos are on display at Amore Coffee in West St. Paul. (Courtesy of Gib Ahlstrand)

This is one of the photos Gib Ahlstrand took of Cherokee Heights kids in August 1973. The photos are on display at Amore Coffee in West St. Paul. (Courtesy of Gib Ahlstrand)

This is one of the photos Gib Ahlstrand took of Cherokee Heights kids in August 1973. The photos are on display at Amore Coffee in West St. Paul. (Courtesy of Gib Ahlstrand)



This is one of the photos Gib Ahlstrand took of Cherokee Heights kids in August 1973. The photos are on display at Amore Coffee in West St. Paul. (Courtesy of Gib Ahlstrand)

This is one of the photos Gib Ahlstrand took of Cherokee Heights kids in August 1973. Ahlstrand was in college when he took the photos. The photos are on display at Amore Coffee in West St. Paul. (Courtesy of Gib Ahlstrand)

Gib Ahlstrand was a bearded, pony-tailed University of Minnesota student with a temp job delivering “junk mail flyers” in St. Paul’s Cherokee Heights neighborhood in August 1973. He’d had his 35mm camera for a couple of years and “I always carried that camera around.”

A bunch of kids yelled for him to take their pictures one late summer afternoon, so he did. They grinned and posed and flashed peace symbols for Ahlstrand, because, he says, “I looked kinda like a hippie.”

“The kids were playing and goofing off,” Ahlstrand says. “All I had to do was click the shutter.”

It’s obvious these kids were comfortable around one another and had been playing hard that day. They hugged and mugged and fell on top of one another in a pile. Their faces and knees were dirty. Their ’70s bicycles had high handlebars, and striped T-shirts seem to be a wardrobe staple.

But those smudged faces and striped T-shirts never got any larger than specks on a contact sheet for more than 40 years.

Ahlstrand found that contact sheet and negatives recently and decided these faces needed to be seen. The photos capture a time and place, but the story feels unfinished.

He hopes someone can identify these kids.

Ahlstrand looked around the Cherokee Heights neighborhood where the photos were taken and found out that Amore Coffee at Smith and Annapolis has gallery space. Coffee manager/curator Paul Johnson said he would hang the photos.

Ahlstrand’s exhibition, “Cherokee Heights Kids – August 1973,” has been displayed on the walls at Amore since mid-October. It’s been featured in neighborhood publications and touted on the coffee shop’s social media.

But no one has come forward to say they knew those kids. Or know those adults.

Ahlstrand, who lives in Minneapolis and worked for 31 years at the University of Minnesota in a scientific imaging laboratory, says he’s driven around the neighborhood to look for the houses and yards in the background, but he hasn’t had any luck there, either.

The photos remind Ahlstrand of growing up in a small town. “They show what this neighborhood looked like 44 years ago,” he says.

And if anyone from that gaggle of kids is still around, he’d like to see what they look like 44 years later.

There’s a notebook in the gallery for visitors to share stories. For more info, contact Amore Coffee at 651-330-0570.

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