DARIN HAYTON

Tag: Hands

  • Hands at Work

    Hands at Work

    I am working on a long-term project to talk to the people who own and run local businesses, the people who make our community unique and real, and to photograph them at work. Rather than a set of portraits, I want to focus on their hands because they tell the story of their efforts. And I want to talk to the people, to listen to their experiences.

    A test poster of four color photos of hands working on bicycles.
    A color four-up poster. From a recent photo shoot at Mechanic.

    The last year has highlighted just how fragile our communities are, as we watch shops that have been around sometimes for years close and go away. I worry about what we are losing. So this project is very much one of preservation. An effort to record in words and images what we have before it’s gone.

    A test poster of four black and white photos of hands working on bicycles.
    A black-and-white four-up poster. From a recent photo shoot at Mechanic.

    In my mind I imagine a project that echoes the form of Dorothea Lange’s American Exodus. She paired photographs with words in a powerful way to capture the experiences of people heading west in the hopes of finding a better life. But I work more local. With people I know or want to know.

    A picture of a hand holding a tool to remove a bicycle crank arm.
    The square format photograph works well on this poster for Mechanic.

    In the end I will produce a book that collects together these photographs and experiences, that joins words and images to tell a story about the community where I live. I will also produce photographs for each person/business, sometimes large format single photographs, sometimes collages or triptychs. They are free to do with those photographs whatever they want. It’s the least I can do for those who let me come sit and listen to them while they work.

    Picture of a greasy hand holding onto a bicycle wheel.
    One of my favorite photographs from Mechanic.

    Here is a small sample of some recent photographs, taken at a local bike shop while I listened to the owner talk about opening it and finding ways to keep it going over the past 14 or so months. I imagined them as a set of poster-sized prints for the shop.

  • Hands At Play

    Hands At Play

    It was a chilly afternoon, weak sunlight scarcely warming the few people sitting in the square or those walking their dogs. At the corner, two men stood across from each other engaged in a sometimes frenetic sometimes contemplative game of chess. In a flurry of moves their hands nearly collided as pawns, rooks, and bishops attacked and retreated. Then, like the kings they rarely moved, the two men stood still for minutes just surveying the board.

    #201221

    Whether moving pieces or considering the board, throughout the game the two talked constantly to, at, and near each other. A stream words tumbled from each man’s mouth. Now and then they responded to what the other had said, but most often they seemed to be sharing some internal monolog of strategy and tactics, of regrets for bad moves and compliments for good ones, of random thoughts that seemed to have nothing to do with anything.

    When the game ended, they reset the board and started a new one, all the while talking without interruption. “We’ve done this a thousand times,” he seemed to say to me in answer the unspoken question in my head, “and he’s beat me most of them.”