DARIN HAYTON

Tag: Philadelphia

  • Making Zines

    Making Zines

    I like making things. Little things. Big things. Lately, I’ve been having fun with an 8-page zine. Printed from one piece of paper, folded, and cut, it is to me the ideal format for a short outing, or for a case study of a place. Or, I can look back through photographs I’ve taken to find a group of 8 that make a good theme.

    A color photograph of zines I have made recently.
    Some of the zines I have been making lately.

    They are easy and relatively quick to print and to fold. I use 11″x17″ sheets of paper, so that each page is about 4″x5″, large enough to showcase the photographs but not so large as to be bulky. I tweaked the layout a bit so that the cover image wraps around the front and back covers.

    Color photograph of the “Vienna at Night” zine, before I folded and cut it.
    The “Vienna at Night” zine before I folded and cut it.

    This format also gives a place to print a large photograph on the back side. It’s sort of a surprise for the person looking at the zine, and a puzzle — it seems unfolding and refolding the zine presents something of a challenge for people, which I didn’t expect.

    A color picture of the Glorietta in Vienna, which is the central image in my zine.
    A picture of the Glorietta that is the central image of the zine “Vienna at Night”

    When it is all done, trimmed, folded, and cut, the zine is the perfect size for my guerrilla art projects. I have given them to friends and handed them to people I don’t know, left them on tables and shelves in coffeeshops, stuffed them between books in libraries and bookstores, and left them on seats in buses.

    Color photograph of the cover of the “Vienna at Night” zine, showing half of the Hofburg.
    The cover of the “Vienna at Night” zine.

    I don’t know what happens to those I abandon in the world. And I don’t really care. The point, for me, is in the making and giving away (not, I stress, “sharing” which has become an essential part of the economy of likes, has become entirely transactional, and depends on knowing what happens to whatever you make).

    Color photograph of two pages in the “Vienna at Night” zine, after I folded and cut it.
    Two of the pages in the “Vienna at Night” zine, after I folded, cut, and pressed it flat.

    Sometimes I leave the house, camera in hand, looking for a coherent set of images that work well together. That was the case with the “Walking in Sacramento” or the “Alone in Philadelphia” zines — I knew an afternoon’s walk would produce at least 8 scenes I could cobble together into a zine. Other times, I draw from a few trips out and about, as in the “Vienna at Night” zines (there are two of these zines, gathering together the photographs from a few nights wandering the city late at night). In other cases, a zine emerges when I’m looking back through photos I’ve taken over a number of trips out. “Alone in Jefferson” is that type — the central image is part of a collection of photographs I’ve taken usually in Jefferson Station that highlight the loneliness of the modern world.

    Color photograph of the central image in the “Alone in Jefferson” zine. A man stands alone against a blue tiled wall. He looks towards his feet.
    The central image for the “Alone in Jefferson” zine.

    Any group of 8 photographs that cohere can become one of these little zines. Inspired by Alexey Titarenko, I took a bunch of photographs of people in a local cafe (see Ghosts in the Cafe). Turns out I have 8 that work well together, so I printed them as a zine. Seems appropriate that I left a handful in that cafe.

    Black and white photograph of a spread from the “Ephemeral” zine, showing ghost like figures is a cafe.
    A spread from the “Ephemeral” zine.

    Like all of my projects, this one will last as long as I find it amusing or interesting. I will continue to print copies of these zines, and cast them into the world. If you’d like to receive a few, send me $10 and your address. I will send you three random zines. Or, offer something in exchange.

  • Connections

    Connections

    The NY Times publishes a puzzle, “Connections,” that presents you with a grid of 16 words and challenges you to find groups of four that share something. In a recent puzzle, for example, “charcoal, ink, paint, pastel” form the group “Art mediums.”

    Perhaps I can think of photography in a similar way. Set out to make small collections, groups of three or four photographs. Each group coheres around a particular idea. That something will be totally arbitrary, idiosyncratic to my sense of grouping. “Activities that start with ‘S’,” for example, or “Things people do in a city,” or “Random group of four photos that I can group together in some trivial way,” or “Green.” Maybe such a game can guide me as I make photographs.

    I could also look back at pictures I’ve made and see if they fall into groups. Let’s try. In this little game of “Connections,” can you make two groups of three photos? What links those three photos?

    Urban #231015. Color photograph of a woman wearing a pink coat and headphones and flip flops walking up a street in front of a grey building.
    Urban #231015.
    Urban #231013.6. A color photo of a man walking in front of a wall of blue tile. The word "Station” can be seen behind him. Also behind him a woman rides an escalator up.
    Urban #231013.6.
    Urban #231013.8. Color photograph of a man leaning against a wall, looking at his phone.
    Urban #231013.8.
    Urban #231013.4. Color photograph of a woman sitting on a stone ledge in front of a building. She is looking at her phone.
    Urban #231013.4.
    Urban #231013.3. Color photograph of a woman walking along a sidewalk in front of a white wall.
    Urban #231013.3.
    Urban #231013.2. Color photograph of a man strolling into a sunny space, surrounded by shadow.
    Urban #231013.2
  • Schoenberg on Art

    Schoenberg on Art

    Arnold Schoenberg reportedly said:

    If it is art it is not for all, and if it is for all it is not art.

    This comment seems to call into question Karl Ove Knausgård’s link between challenging art and Protestantism, not because Schoenberg doesn’t agree that art is difficult but because Schoenberg clearly didn’t link art to Protestantism. Whether Schoenberg’s description of music, Calvino’s of literature, or Knausgård’s of photography, the idea that art is restricted to the enlightened few, the properly educated, the cultured, those with the luxury of time and money to appreciate it, explains why I don’t consider myself an artist.

    Urban #231013.6. A color photo of a man walking in front of a wall of blue tile. The word "Station” can be seen behind him. Also behind him a woman rides an escalator up.
    Urban #231013.6.

    I create meaningless things, sometimes those are photographs, sometimes magazines, sometimes books. I create things I want to see in the world. Those things might be sufficiently layered to invite different interpretation, or not. It doesn’t matter. If nobody likes them. That’s ok. If everybody likes them. That’s ok too. It’s not like I’m trying to make art.

  • Yellow

    Yellow

    The woman sitting at the table outside is the only person not consumed by a screen. She divides her time between a book on Chakra Healing and the tiny dog in her lap, which she has wrapped in a blanket despite the bright, warm day. She looks up eagerly when anybody approaches as if hoping to see an old friend after a long absence. A wide-brimmed hat casts a dark shadow across the top half of her face. Blue-tinted glasses hide her eyes. A large, leather bag lies open on the seat next to her. Conspicuous among the jumble of personal items is the bright yellow journal poking out of the top of the bag. What does she write in the journal? Notes from her Chakra Healing book? Thoughts on the young couple that stopped to pet her dog? Sketches of what she sees? Questions for the person watching her from inside the cafe? She takes the journal out, retrieves a pen, pushes her book to the far side of the table, and prepares to write. For a couple minutes she stares off into the distance, wondering perhaps what to write. Then she changes her mind, cuddles her dog, and returns both pen and journal to her bag. She also puts the Chakra Healing book into her bag. She scoops up her dog still wrapped in its blanket, grabs her bag, and walks down the narrow street.

    Urban #231013.5. A color photo of a woman sitting at a red metal table outside a cafe.
    Urban #231013.5.

    A mile away, a different, slightly older woman slouches outside another coffee shop, next to two yellow plastic toy trucks she had carefully arranged on the ledge when she first sat down. She struggled with her phone, treating it more like a microphone than a telephone. Holding it in front of her, she would say loudly “I can’t hear you” and poke at the screen a few times. She would then quickly raise the phone to her ear and just as quickly pull it from her ear, saying once again to the screen, “I can’t hear you.” Her conversation continued like this for a surprisingly long time. Eventually, she stuffed her phone into her bag and wandered off, leaving the toy trucks on the ledge. I don’t know if she came back for them.

  • 30 minutes in 30th Street

    30 minutes in 30th Street

    I had an appointment in the city the other day. Given the train schedule, I would either arrive about 45 minutes early or 5 minutes late. I opted to arrive early so that I could spend half an hour or so taking pictures in the beautiful train station.

    Urban #230510.0. A black and white photograph of a woman standing in 30th Street Train Station looking at her phone.
    Urban #230510.0

    The station was bustling with people — commuters, students heading home for the summer, tourists arriving in the city. In the 30 minutes I spent in the station, I took a bunch of photographs that I will assemble into a small book, “30 Minutes in 30th Street.”

    Urban #230510.1. A black and white photograph of a line of people in 30th Street Train Station waiting to board a train.
    Urban #230510.1

    Once I make a bunch, I’ll leave them in local coffee shops and Little Free Libraries in the area. Just the latest in my pamphlet and limited editions projects. Let me know if you want one.

  • Colored Doors

    Colored Doors

    Dublin’s colorful doors are legendary and even staid London has a long tradition of colored doors, though not as dramatic as Dublin’s. Lots of photographers produce series of photos of these doors, photos that end up on countless postcards and posters, typically with catchy names like “The Doors of [fill in city name].” Now that we’ve moved into a post-postcard world, snapshots of those doors probably fill social media feeds. When I find myself in cities known for their doors, I want to be attracted to them. I take photo after photo of them. I vary the composition. Yet I’m never quite satisfied.

    #210204.2

    The color contrast and textures never quite reproduce in my photograph they way I imagine them. They’re interesting, sure, but something is missing. This photo, for example, works well as a souvenir. I see the cracked, teal doors and recall immediately walking along the little side street, the morning sun warming my limbs. I remember waiting for a car to pass so I could step out into the street to take the photo. But is there more?

    #210204.1

    This one works better. I like the window poking out from behind the wall, the only splash of color. The dead plant on the right highlights the layers in this photos. Reminds us that there is space between the front wall and the window. The beam set into the adobe on the left is like a question. Why is it here? What does it support? I think there is more nuance in this photography. It hints at something.

    Closer to home, I still try to make colored doors interesting. Philadelphia has no shortage of opportunities. I find that the doors in alleys and behind buildings more attractive. Perhaps because I think they are more suggestive. They imply a history filled with people living lives, moving goods, trying to slow the building’s ruing, surrendering to the ravages of time only to try, now and then, to paint over the decay.

    #210204.3

    Maybe these doors are more interesting to me not because they have been painted some vibrant color, but because they are part of a micro-ecosystem. I like these doors because they prompt me to build a story around them, they reveal layers and layers, each one another history. Colored doors are fine and all, as visuals, but I want my photographs to be more than a pleasing visuals.

  • Celebrating Imperfect

    Celebrating Imperfect

    The patterns created by the stairs and shadows intrigued me, as did the contrast between the parallels of light and dark, on the right, and the smooth, evenly lit surface on the left. I like the photograph I made that summer afternoon, I like it because it reminds me of the afternoon wandering the gardens, and I like it because I think the two halves present an interesting contrast. But somehow the photo doesn’t capture what I saw in my mind when I took it. It falls short of my imagined picture and include aspects that distract. But I still like this photograph.

    #170825

    My dissatisfaction with this photo has nothing to do with the picture itself and everything to do with how the picture fails to compel the real world to conform to the image in my head. A translation error prevents me from mapping the ideal world onto the physical world, the world in which I live. I am reminded of Plato’s story about the Demiurge, his quasi-divine, omniscient but far from omnipotent creator. This Demiurge was burdened with creating the messy, flawed world we humans inhabit out of some ideal, eternal, and immaterial world of forms. In every instance, however, the Demiurge was thwarted by the recalcitrant matter that refused in random and unpredictable ways to conform to the plan. We are left with the flawed, decaying real world filled with things that only approximate their ideal models. With every photograph I am enacting in some limited, two-dimensional way the Demiurge’s struggles. I have access to an ideal photograph that exists only in my imagination, but my efforts to realize that photograph always fall short because the world refuses to conform to my ideas.

    #191207

    The contrasting halves, the crooked lines converging at the top, the tooling marks on the steps, the eroded stone captured my attention. I took a dozen photos of this scene, and although I like this one most, it too fails to capture what I saw. Within the self-help and motivational cottage industry there is a sector devoted to the pursuit of perfection. On the one hand, somebody with a fancy wireless mic pacing around a stages for three to ten minutes urges us to stop letting the idea of perfection paralyze us. The self-help language stretches and distends the aphoristic: “Perfect is the enemy of the good.” On the other hand, somebody, often on the same stage with the same fancy wireless mic and for the same three to ten minutes, reminds us that by striving for perfection we can achieve greatness. The motivational language expands and dilates the aphoristic: “…if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” The messages are honest, earnest, and affirmational.

    #210111

    The fractured steps, the weeds, and the graffiti all attest to the impermanence and imperfections of human creation. Plato’s Demiurge never stopped creating imperfect, flawed, degenerate and degenerating things. The goal was not to produce perfect but to produce imperfect. For by considering the limitless series of imperfect humans might glimpse the perfect, or at least imagine it. The imperfect encourages us to reflect, to contemplate, and to imagine. So celebrate the imperfect for it is the only way to bridge the gap between the real and the imagined.

  • Lonely Building (redux)

    Lonely Building (redux)

    I really want to like this photograph, but something about it bothers me.

    If only a person had been standing by the table looking out the window.

    It has nothing to do with what’s in the frame and everything to do with what’s not in the picture. Or more precisely: What bothers me is what I had to do to get rid of something that was in the original picture.

    I wandered around that corner for quite some time trying to get the right angle that would capture the window, the table, the building, and the sky. There was no ideal spot that isolated the building in just the way I wanted. So I settled for what seemed to be the best composition. Unfortunately, that composition had a massive building dominating the left half of the frame:

    If only that skyscraper hadn’t been there mucking up the sky.

    Easy enough to remove in post-processing. That’s why they invented the healing and inpainting brushes and the clone-stamp tool. A few minutes with my preferred editing program and the skyscraper was gone. Nobody would be any the wiser.

    Except I know what I did. And for me, knowing that I cloned out half the frame ruins the final image. The effort to remove the offending building became an interesting exercise in how much manipulation I can accept. I have no problem with various local adjustments and will make small distractions disappear. But at some point it becomes too much for me. I don’t know where that dividing line falls, and I certainly can’t quantify it. But as a rule of thumb: When the manipulation changes the mood or tone of the photo entirely, as it does in the images here, it is too much for me.

    Two caveats: First, my rule of thumb is almost certainly grounded in some combination of a romantic notion of photographic integrity and a preference for one type of labor (walking around and looking for the perfect frame) over another (editing on a computer). Second, this is my rule of thumb for my photographs, and is not meant to apply to anybody else or that person’s photographs.

  • Lonely Building

    Lonely Building

    I was wandering the city that overcast Wednesday afternoon. While not empty, as it had been in the early months of the pandemic, it was not bustling in any normal way. Most offices in the city remained closed or only sparsely staffed. So I took the chance to look for scenes that would capture the emptiness. Glancing up at one corner, I noticed a table next to a window in a low-rise office building.

    If only a person had been standing by the table looking out the window.

    Nine months ago, I probably could have waited long enough to catch somebody standing at the window, transforming this photo from a minimalist picture into an Edward Hopper-esque photograph.

    Even without the person, I really like this photo. It captures the image I had hoped to find that afternoon. I like the loneliness it suggests. The table that earlier this year would have been a meeting place for colleagues to chat and share some gossip, or a place for somebody to take a quick break is today collecting dust, like so many tables and desks in offices everywhere.

  • 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.