DARIN HAYTON

Author: Darin

  • Daily Thoughts

    Daily Thoughts

    For a number of years now I have each morning written down a single thought. I had assumed a thought a day would be easy. It has been at times, however, surprisingly difficult. Some mornings I stare at the blank page and struggle to produce a thought, one that is my own. I take drink of coffee and in that moment the tendrils of thought reach up into my consciousness but retreat as soon as I set my coffee down and grab for my pen. Finally, I force out something that looks like a thought. Other days, thoughts trip over each other. But I need only one. Those mornings I merely filter out the bad thoughts and choose the one I like best.

    Some notebooks containing my single thought for the day.

    Looking back over these thoughts, I have come to see that some are interesting, many are trite, and some incomplete. But the exercise is valuable for a number of reasons. First, sitting alone I know that nobody but I must see my thought. So if it is dull or boring or trite, that’s between me and the paper. The act of producing a thought, of writing it down, of seeing it on paper is valuable in itself. It keeps me from considering my thoughts precious or looking at them with some reverence. They are just something I write down each morning.

    Second, the habit of writing a thought — good, bad, or neutral — each morning makes it easier to produce something. Now, after some time, I sit down with my coffee, pen in hand, open my notebook, and jot down a thought. I don’t tend to struggle as I once did. I doubt my thoughts have improved in consistent way, but by producing more of them I am able to produce more good ones.

    Third, when I look back over these thoughts I begin to see patterns and trends. Some topics seem to recur, separated by a few dozen thoughts. Others erupt into my notebook, consume me for a week or so, and then fade. Often some seemingly random observations clearly agitate or animate me for a morning, never to return. There is no rhyme or reason to this series of thoughts, joined as they are by nothing more than chronology. But as fragments of my existence, they are interesting all the same.

    In a variety of ways those thoughts urge me to take more photographs.

    Finally, and perhaps most surprising to me, these thoughts encourage my photography. They offer thoughts or ideas that direct my attention, encourage me to look for something in the world, suggest a theme for a series of photographs. Sometimes they remind me that photography, like so many creative projects, needs to satisfy me. These thoughts also remind me that I can take photographs every day, photographs of whatever passes before me. It’s ok if many of those photos are trite, banal, or poorly executed. That’s between me and my camera. Some, however, will be interesting.

  • Familiarity of Place

    Familiarity of Place

    And all had, after long acquaintance, at last understood that familiarity with a place will not lead to absolute knowledge but only to ever further enquiry.

    R. Macfarlane, The Old Ways (2013), 111
  • Movement of the Imagination

    Movement of the Imagination

    … the photographer’s main problem, like that of the landscape architect, is to establish a point of view which directs the movement of the imagination.

    Caption to E. Atget’s photograph, “The Orangerie Staircase.”

  • Amateurs and Art

    Amateurs and Art

    I wonder why we have come to use “amateur” as a pejorative adjective when applied to photographers. People tend to elide the gap between the trite definition of an amateur — somebody who doesn’t earn a living or much money taking pictures — and the more condescending definition — somebody who is inept at taking pictures. But this confuses two separate and not necessarily related categories — quality and remuneration. I think the freedom from remuneration offers a valuable freedom, a freedom that many people claim is at the heart of making art.

    Amateur photographers are most likely to be taking photographs because they love taking photographs, and perhaps looking at them. Maybe part of that experience includes buying the latest gear. Maybe it takes them to unusual places (or to the well-worn places frequented by so many photography workshops). It doesn’t really matter, it seems to me, any more than it matters that people who will never be professional sprinters buy expensive running shoes and shorts to run on the local track, or so many aging men spend thousands on bikes and lycra that doesn’t belong on middle-aged bodies but will never ride in the Tour. The point of being an amateur is merely and simply loving what you do while not getting paid to do it.

    A hotel painted pink and green.
    #181102u

    It seems to me that amateurs photographers, because they don’t make photographs in exchange for money, have the freedom to make the photographs they want as opposed to the photographs somebody else wants. They might squander that freedom, but…. That doesn’t mean that any amateur photographer’s photographs are good or would sell, but art need not be good or have any market value. Not being a camera for hire liberates amateurs from the constraints that risk limiting the professional photographer.

    Maybe, just maybe, the term amateur is an expression of envy as it is anything else because somewhere inside people long for the freedom to create art just for themselves.

    Coda: Obviously, the economy of “likes” and “followers” that is the currency of social networks and drives the mind-numbing monotony of popular photos imposes different and perhaps more rigid constraints.

  • Simplifying quotation

    Simplifying quotation

    Every photographer knows that a photograph simplifies.… A photograph quotes from appearances but, in quoting, simplifies them. This simplification can increase legibility.

    John Berger, Understanding a Photograph (2013), 74
  • For the thing itself …

    For the thing itself …

    I do not photograph for ulterior purposes. I photograph for the thing itself—for the photograph—without consideration of how it may be used.

    Eliot Porter, Intimate Landscapes (New York, 1979), 11
  • A Case for Postcards

    A Case for Postcards

    Postcards are, in many ways, the opposite of snapshots. They are carefully timed, sometimes staged, usually aspirational scenes. I say aspirational because they project a longed-for and idealized experience. They also tend to homogenize our experiences of a place, produced as they are by a tourism industry that seeks to commodify and promote particular destinations. It is their connection to place that can make postcards today seem outdated. In a world that produces, shares, and consumes selfies and other influencer generated images, which are about promoting a personal brand rather than a place or a destination, postcards are quaint artifacts of twentieth-century capitalism. But postcards have, I think, various qualities that make them a valuable medium, some of which they share with snapshots.

    P.P. 52.27.0

    Postcards are intentional. They depict a scene that a sender has chosen, often from a spinning, wire-rack tree of postcards outside a souvenir shop. Something about that scene resonated with the sender. Postcards are also intended for somebody, a recipient. They are not broadcast to a following, but sent to a family member, friend, or acquaintance. Postcards thus also reflect the sender’s assumptions about the recipient.

    Their specificity is marked also in the messages scrawled on the back. Postcards are written, however hastily, to somebody. They might include a report of what the sender was doing, might include platitudes about the weather, might include well wishes, or might include a seemingly insignificant comment. Regardless, postcards are an opportunity for the sender to say something to the recipient. Postcards, therefore, connect two people.

    P.P. 52.17.0

    Like snapshots, the postcard’s physicality is comforting. That comfort begins with finding a postcard in the mailbox, amongst all the institutionally addressed window-envelopes with metered postage in the upper right corner. The roughly 4×6” hand-written postcard complete with postage stamp stands out as a reminder that we are more than an account number, that we are important to another person. We have the physical proof of it in this postcard we now hold.

    Again, like snapshots, postcards seem to take on significance with time and distance. Sometimes we contemplate them, reading and rereading the message on the back, before taping the postcard on a wall or mirror or appliance so we can glance at it regularly and think of the person who sent it. Other times, quickly read and tossed into a drawer or box to be discovered later, postcards become important mementos of people and relationships, relics of former lives.

    P.P. 52.23.0

    And finally, like snapshots, postcards are mundane. They are not, despite the aspirations of some printers, fine art. The wide, white border found on so many artsy postcards does not elevate their status. It just makes the photograph smaller. They might be a pretty photograph of a picturesque scene, but they are not fine art. They are quotidian, even when they are sent from some exotic place.

    These observations seem to hold whether we send postcards to people we know or simply collect them for our future selves. Maybe we should all send more postcards.

  • The details of nature …

    The details of nature …

    The details of nature become more interesting, and the become more beautiful too, as one becomes more aware of them.

    Eliot Porter, The Color of Wildness (New York, 2001), 132
  • In Praise of Snapshots

    In Praise of Snapshots

    Snapshots don’t receive the love and affection they deserve. Snapshots, those quick photos dashed off with little thought or planning. They are often out of focus, not level, too bright or too dark, and poorly composed, if at all. Faded, bent, and torn snapshots fill equally faded albums and dusty boxes on the top shelves in closets. Snapshots are anything but “fine art.”

    Sopapillas at El Patio in Albuquerque.

    But that is, I think, precisely their value. They are not staged or rehearsed. They are, instead, moments of lives lived. They are unguarded and vernacular. They don’t pretend to be more than a statement, a statement that otherwise would have been lost if not for some unknowable drive that prompted us to take a picture. We are fortunate to have captured that statement, for now we can look back and immediately recall the thousand then insignificant details that now have so much more meaning.

    Another closed shop in Dannebrog.

    An article in the NY Times argues for the value of the mundane moments, “Why Mundane Moments Truly Matter.” People forget the pleasures of everyday life in their search for the significant. But life isn’t those peaks of significance. Life is, instead, all valleys and plateaus and plains that get us from one quickly forgotten significant moment to the next. Life is not highlights. Life is the mundane.

    A well-stocked market in Narberth.

    I can’t look at these photographs and not be overwhelmed by all the recollections, the dog lounging on the patio to my side as we ate, the disappointment as we were denied a Danish, the nostalgia then and now for that well-stocked market with its wall of freezers.

    A subway entrance in Philadelphia.

    These snapshots deserve more than an electronic purgatory on our smartphones or a quick deletion from our memory cards. They deserve to be printed, some quick note scrawled on the back, and thrown into a box or put into an album that can be stored on a shelf. That box and that album will be discovered over and over again, when somebody is looking for something else or when somebody is cleaning out the closet. And when it is discovered with its treasure of snapshots, it will bring pleasure and joy. It will be the opportunity for questions, reflections, and conversation. It will bring back to life a real life. It is how we spent our time, which is how we lived.

    It’s time we started marveling in the mundane.

  • Documenting Covid-19

    Documenting Covid-19

    An article/interactive in today’s NY Times, “The Great Empty,” reminds photographers that they can play a role in documenting history. This is the first pandemic we’ve experienced since photography has become widely available and practiced. Sure, photography was around during the 1918-1919 pandemic, but only to a relative few. Today there are multitudes.

    Chairs await occupants in an empty courtyard in Milan.

    I hope photographers who have the time and resources, insofar as they can do it safely, get out and document our current experiences. Our experiences and struggles not just in big cities or famous tourist destinations, but also and perhaps more importantly in the tens of thousands of small towns that are struggling to survive.

    No, documenting our current social crisis won’t produce any income, but those photographs might (especially if printed) serve future generations when they confront and try to cope with their own pandemics.