2025 11 23

Allison. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck

My wife (pictured) does not like this image. Clay (a published photographer) told me it’s his favorite image in my zine.

One of my big recent lessons has been that in practice, an image being good or bad has far less value than I’d previously placed upon it. More important to the work, I’m learning, is the context in which the specific image is placed. Is it alone on a print or in the middle of a book? Is it resting in a blog page with words below it or included in a web portfolio?

My first zine project (Pointing at Stuff 001, available now!) was very much a working lesson in world building and narrative forming. I won’t tell you I’m a master at thees things just yet, but I now feel like I’ve got at least one foot on the foundation and am excited to see where the next step takes me.

-Clayton