Jaine N. Hayward — Artist Statement
Photography for me has become an obsessive process of discovery. Over the past five years, I have been exploring, over and over, the surrounding neighborhood and landscape within walking distance of my home in Waltham, Massachusetts. My neighborhood is nice, but not terribly remarkable—suburban houses and apartments both old and new; woods, trails and ponds, but not of the destination variety. I note the obvious changes that occur with the seasons, of course, but repeated visits have me noticing the details and the special moments when the natural forces conspire to elevate the mundane. I have become a seeker of nature’s “15 minutes of fame.”
In the process, I have become an amateur botanist—learning the names and life cycles of the plants and trees. I know which groves, which bushes, which paths to visit and revisit and when they might shine and smile for my camera (or bear fruit for my foraging). Each walk I take reveals something new, something ephemeral, something that will never quite repeat itself. And I have begun to feel a sense of urgency and responsibility to find and document the sublime, the curious, the wondrous, that I know exists out there at any given moment, just waiting to be found.
Like a botanist, I am beginning to sort and “classify” my images into their own system of taxonomy—but in an artistic, rather than scientific, manner. The images shown here are of a variety of genus—nascent buds, beguiling tendrils, and other botanical groupings, along with images that reflect our human presence in this space—our homes, our trash...
Among and embedded in these groupings are my anthropomorphized images—the images that to my eye, can be read as “human;” not necessarily in the literal sense, but rather in the sense of expressing a certain essence of the human condition. Some to me seem more obvious than others; some can have multiple meanings. Assembled together I begin to see each image almost as a pictograph, and the order you “read” them tells a story— of life, longing, loss, redemption... These images serve as signifiers, to which each of us brings our own life experiences, expectations and beliefs, and therefore our own interpretations. I invite you to explore and to find your own meaning in these images.
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“The photographer projects himself into everything he sees, identifying himself with everything in order to know it and to feel it better.”
– Minor White