2024 11 29

Hanging a photo show with Nathan Pearce at my See You Soon studio. Chicago, Illinois. September, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

This year has been an eventful one for me in so many ways. One event I was proud of was the photo show and discussion I hosted at my space with photographer Nathan Pearce and photographer/photobook publisher Clint Woodside of Deadbeat Club. I’m aiming to do more events and shows of this nature, but running an event space mostly by myself, on top of all my other jobs and the “day job” of the space, makes ambitious regular programing not quite possible. This is further complicated by the building I’m in being in a bit of a defining phase. Is it an arts building or is it a professional’s office building? Time will tell and money talks.

Much like the building, I myself am in a transitional phase, and I’m not quite sure which direction I will be heading in a few years. I write about it quite a lot on this here blog, but my core business of commercial photography is quite turbulent lately and the longer-term outlook is hazy. There are so many challenges facing photographers like myself, and I think we’re all sort of wondering what we should be focusing on.

Just now, I hung sixteen prints in the lobby of my building, the Kimball Arts Center, as a homeless man dozed off on the coffee shop bench. Learning to print, learning to frame, learning to hang. These are all skills I’ve neglected as a photographer and I feel like this, in addition to a bunch of other stuff I’m spending time on lately, is myself revisiting fundamentals that I largely skipped in my younger years. It’s really the little wins that keep me going, as hard as it has been. While being enthusiastic and excited about printing your work is nice, making it sustainable financially is a completely different scenario. I was joking with a fellow photographer/director, who is also going through a slow patch, that booking commercial projects is far easier than selling fine art photo prints.

It’s hard to even give these things away!

I get it, though. This is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s hardly even a business endeavor. It’s fundamentals. Hard hat, lunch pail. Put in the reps. Put in the work. It leads somewhere. Where, exactly, I’m not sure, but I’m doing my best to make sure I’m enjoying the path and learning while I go, while doing my best at not also becoming a homeless person myself.

-Clayton