2025 12 06

Man fixes fence? Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck

Ever since I started photographing things, I’ve been attracted to strange and absurd moments such as this one, spotted out my studio fire escape. Rather hilariously, this entire fence blew over in a storm about a week later. I bring up this image today not as a way to compare myself to him, but the sentiment behind his work, which was always one I was drawn to and considered one of my biggest early inspirations. Martin Parr passed away today, a sad day for the photography community as a whole.

While I don’t have anything profound to add to that conversation, I will instead use this as a moment to turn inward towards myself. Regrets in my career have been a lack of focus on these moments that drew me to put a camera in my hand in the first place; a lack of keeping up on names like Martin Parr who inspired me to make this hobby my career; a lack of continuing to make these wacky snapshots for many years while distracted making better money on commercial projects.

Anyway, onward and upward. Grateful to still be here doing this hobby-as-job for whatever time I have!

-Clayton

PS - here’s a nice chat with Martin on Ben Smith’s Small Voice podcast

2025 12 03

Attempting to hold back nature. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck

Here’s a blurb I wrote for Cengiz Yar’s newsletter about my favorite photobook of the year:

While perhaps not as easily digestible as Daniel Arnold’s You Are What You Do (Loose Joints), my close runner-up for photobook of the year, Zed Nelson’s The Anthropocene Illusion (Guest Editions) is one of those projects that comes along and transcends the genre of mere photobook to become something far more significant. In our modern world of *gestures broadly*, this book does more to communicate where we’re at as a species than perhaps any work of art I’ve yet encountered. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, yet photography continues to be such an underrated form of art. This title shows what’s possible when you harness those unsaid words within its pages, filling it with such rich and complex meaning and narrative, while simultaneously being beautiful to look at. Because of this I can’t help but consider it my favorite of the year for what it’s able to communicate. Of course, not everyone will see it this way. That, too, explains how we’ve ended up where we are. *gestures broadly*

Favorite: Zed Nelson’s The Anthropocene Illusion (Guest Editions)

Runners-Up: Daniel Arnold’s You Are What You Do (Loose Joints), Jake Knapp’s Trump, Colorado (Constituent)

-Clayton