DARIN HAYTON

Category: Create

  • Windmills, or Photography as Natural History

    Windmills, or Photography as Natural History

    Singular photographs are fragments, or perhaps illustrations waiting for a story to give them context. But series of photographs seem to prompt a different kind of reflection. Collect together enough individual fragments and arrange them in some order, and the begin to reveal something you can’t see when looking at just one. The photographer engages in a sort of Aristotelian project, seeking out as many discrete examples of something in its natural setting in order to discern the features and characteristics each shares. Or the ways that each interacts with, shapes and is shaped by, that natural environment. In this way, photography becomes a project of natural history.

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    The intentional and sustained effort to take a number of related photos and to assemble them into a meaningful series encourages reflection and a sort of tranquility. And, in the end, says as much about the object studied, e.g., windmills, as it says about the photographer. But then, that’s true of any natural history endeavor.

  • Urban Shadows

    Urban Shadows

    The last weekend of summer in Philadelphia offered the chance to look for contrast between light and dark. Nothing metaphorical or profound. Just shadows.

    Looking for and at shadows invites a different way of seeing the city, a way that often requires looking down, looking for lines and patterns, for fragments of people going about their lives. The shoes and the streets tell us a lot about who the person is. Feet walking to work, work in the tourist industry, wear period shoes and extend beneath the hem of a historic skirt. They move efficiently across the street in a crosswalk, against the “Don’t Walk” sign.

    Other feet don more comfortable, casual shoes, those worn by people who are themselves probably tourists. They stroll along cobblestoned side streets where no “Walk” sign discourages their progress. They have no destination in mind, no place to go.

    But don’t always look down. Light and shadow play across buildings too, creating patterns and contrast with the late summer sky. Buildings that send forth dog-walking residents who look every bit as tidy and uncluttered as the buildings they’ve just exited.

  • Architecture of Religion in the South West

    Architecture of Religion in the South West

    There is a special aesthetic to religion in the South West. A starkness to the architecture and design, born perhaps from the struggle to survive in the harsh climate. Amazingly, some of the missions and churches have survived centuries. The San Xavier del Bac mission south of Tucson, for example. Founded in the late seventeenth century, the church dates from the late eighteenth. It’s hard to believe that the population in the area was sufficient to support the mission for the past two centuries. It is also a testament to the Franciscans who have continued to hold mass at the church and minister to the community for the past 225 years.

    San Xavier del Bac

    While some religious institutions continue to survive in the south west’s unforgiving climate, others struggle and contract. In Santa Fe the St. Francis Cathedral School represents the other end of the durability spectrum. Founded just 70 years ago in downtown Santa Fe, the, school closed about a decade ago. The school was repurposed as an arts school. But that too has closed. Now the property is for sale. Stay tuned for another otherwise unremarkable over-priced “boutique” hotel.

    Former St. Francis Cathedral School