DARIN HAYTON

Tag: Fine art photography

  • Flora, Study No. 11

    Flora, Study No. 11

    I have begun to sort my photographs of flowers into groups. I then print a few of the images and assemble them into little pamphlets, each organized around a particular flower. A recent pamphlet focused on a few photographs of red roses.

    Title page and back page with colophon. Title "Flora"; colophon is a URL, www.drhayton.com
    Draft title page and back page with colophon. Printed on cheap, copy paper.

    Like all of these pamphlets, this one is short. Three photographs pasted onto the pages. Very little text, limited to the first page. And like all my book/pamphlet-making efforts, this one went through a handful of drafts. Revising the text. Testing different proportions for the photographs. Printing both the text and the images on different papers.

    Spread showing text and image in a pamphlet I recently created.
    Marked up draft of a spread from a pamphlet I recently created.

    I find the process fulfilling. Something about producing something that, for me, makes photography so much richer than locking it away in some digital prison where images go to die in the social-media doomscroll.

    Spread showing a photograph of a rose and a page with a caption.
    A spread where I test out a different size image. I like this one better.

    The process it iterative and full of mistakes. How many times have I pasted the wrong photograph on a particular page (as above and below)? How many times have I misassembled the pages, or misprinted them? For any normal person, I’m sure this process would be frustrating. But for me the promise of sharing my work, giving something to somebody, even if I don’t know that person, nourishes my creativity.

    Photo of the cover of the pamphlet, showing red binding thread.
    Heavy paper cover of final draft of pamphlet.

    This particular pamphlet/study grew out of a bouquet a neighbor gave us. They were out of town when their monthly flower arrangement was delivered. They told us to take and enjoy them. I photographed the roses from the bouquet as they opened and browned and wilted. I selected three photographs for this pamphlet.

    Text and image, from the first two pages of the pamphlet, showing corrected text and final image with longer proportions.
    First pages of pamphlet with corrected text and photo with longer proportions (in this draft I pasted the first two photographs on the wrong pages — oops).

    I drafted some text that linked the photographs, and printed and bound the pamphlet, with red thread because that seemed best suited for the photographs.

    Image of the center pages, with photo of red rose on the right, red binding thread in the middle, and caption on the left.
    Central pages, showing rose image and red binding thread (in this draft I pasted the first two photographs on the wrong pages — oops).

    I left a copy in my neighbor’s mailbox as a thank you for the bouquet. She texted to let me know she got the pamphlet and loved it — that was kind of her to say.

    I don’t know how many of these I will make, maybe a few dozen copies. These are another of the “limited editions” I create, prompted by somebody or something and limited because I think there’s a small and finite audience for them. But I’m always willing and able to print more. When I have enough of these pamphlets, I’ll print an entire set and bind them all together into a book. But that’s a project for another day.

  • Ashford Farm Photo Book

    Ashford Farm Photo Book

    I make “limited edition” books, something between art books and photo books. They are often experiments that will never move beyond my work table, hence the “limited edition” label. I play with format, with layout, with folding pages or cut pages. Some are little more than pamphlets. I always learn something from these books.

    This “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022” is another type of book. This type I tend to make for somebody I know or someplace I frequent. In this case, I assembled photographs I had taken while at Ashford Farm, a local horse farm. Over the past couple years I had spent a number of days there watching the riders and looking around the farm. I had taken pictures of horses in their stalls, people riding horses, kids in the summer riding camps, and other parts of the farm that seemed interesting to me. These episodic books are “limited editions” insofar as I suspect only a very small number of people will be interested in them.

    Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022 first draft title page
    Draft pages with notes, from an early draft of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”

    Like all such books, “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022” went through a number of revisions in my head before I got around to printing a draft. For me, printing and assembling a draft is essential, even if the draft is small and printed on cheap copy paper. I have to see the sequence, thumb through the pages, test the folding pages and see how partial pages work.

    When I’ve worked out the initial problems and arranged the pages the way I want, I tend to print a full-size draft.

    Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022 another draft title page
    One of the pages in the draft of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022”
    Fold-out page before folding out, in a draft of Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.
    Fold-out page after folding out, in a draft of Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.

    I spend a day or so looking at this draft just to see how it feels, especially things like format and dimensions, and to catch the last problems or issues that have thus far escaped my notice. I also think about things like binding, covers, and paper. When I’m happy with the draft (or no longer unhappy with it), I print the final version and assemble the book.

    The final cover of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”
    Tack hanging in door from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”
    A horse looks out of its stable, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”
    A horse walking in a ring, as seen through the fence, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”

    For “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022” I assembled 51 photos I had taken last year and this year. Landscape orientation with a number of fold-out pages seemed ideal. The pages would be large enough to accommodate both landscape and portrait photos, and the fold-outs would let me include some 16×9 proportion shots. I used a binding (often referred to as “Japanese Stab Binding” though also similar to the binding used on “Chinese-style notebooks”) and cover that echoed utilitarian notebooks. I used a smooth, bright matte paper for a couple copies and bamboo-washi paper for another. Each copy is unique — not only did I print them on different paper (my favorite was the Awagami bamboo paper, mainly because of the feel), but I also used different thread for the stitching and in one case different stock for the cover.

    Here are a few more photos from this book.

    A horse looks out from its stable, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”
    A young girl pausing to look at a horse in the barn, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”
    Tack hanging on the wall in the tack room, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”
    A stirrup, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”

    In the end, I made three copies of this book, one for me, one for a friend, and one for the people who own Ashford Farm and let me loiter and take pictures. These episodic projects exist somewhere between creativity and art. I am happy to have made this book and need not share it with anybody, hence creativity. But it does something more when I share it with an audience that might be interested, hence art.

    I might make another copy or two. I might not. If you want one, let me know. Maybe we can work something out.

  • 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.

  • 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.