2024 10 08

Cat on farm. Thawville, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

It’s been a busy few months and I’m still way behind on photo editing and life. I’m still working through a backlog of images from mid-summer. My to-do list of projects is long and I’m hopeful I will be able to start digging into some of the projects I aim to do as the days get colder, the sunlight less abundant, and the idea of staying in to buckle down on work starts to make more sense.

I pulled a photobook off my shelf this afternoon while waiting on batch processing of portrait edits. It was Tim Barber’s Untitled Photographs book, which I hadn’t peeked at in years. This led me to Tim’s website, which I also hadn’t been to in years. His website kept my attention through the entire series of one-at-a-time images and I thought the minimalist approach was something I might want to steal. As I get older, the urge to re-focus my photography web presence also grows. My site is currently far more catered to a commercial client audience, which makes sense as this is how I’ve made a living for two decades. But I’m beginning to wonder if a less on-the-nose and more minimal and artistic approach might be a smart move. Looking at Tim’s website got me excited. Much like after leaving an inspiring photo exhibit at a museum, I was walking around the studio seeing inanimate objects in a new light and taking photos of things I’d normal ignore. I love when this urge takes over and drives me to create new work. The trick is to make sure the subjects aren’t dying flowers on the kitchen counter. Get out and live a little, after you catch up on the photo editing, that is.

-Clayton

2024 05 21

The scene out back in rural Haubstadt, Indiana. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

While navigating rural Indiana/Illinois on my way to catch the solar eclipse the following day, I stopped to charge my fancy electric vehicle. As I navigated into the parking lot, I needed to dodge random debris on the road, along with what appeared to be a downed power line. After pulling into the charging spot to juice my ride, I got out in search of a bathroom, having held my bladder the last fifty miles. Ominously, the building appeared simultaneously new, abandoned, and very much closed. A generator sat outside with cords and cables running in through an open window. A half dozen other fancy EVs from parts unknown sat next to mine, their drivers milling around the immediate area and keeping to themselves.

Needing to urinate quite badly, I ventured out to check the building and sure enough, it was closed. Grump and annoyed, I continued scouring the area thinking maybe there was some private spot out here in the middle of nowhere to relieve myself. After rounding the corner, in back of the building, I came upon this scene pictured above. A brilliant sun shining through the clouds onto farmland and junk and trash and an unattended fire pit.

“Fucking Indiana,” I thought to myself judgingly while trekking back to my car, still holding my bladder and without Slim Jims.

Once the charge was complete, I headed down road to the nearby McDonalds to examine their facilities. Upon pulling into that parking lot, I began to notice more debris along with downed trees and power lines, which made me think back to a conversation I’d had with a local a few days prior in which he told me about the tornadoes that hit this general area.

Ahh yes. What I’d been witnessing was not just busted infrastructure blocking my need to urinate and buy beef jerky to subdue my raging hanger, but the remnants of a fucking tornado which had rolled through the area just a few days prior.

“Y’all from here?” I asked a family heading into the McDonalds, hoping to get confirmation.

“Yessum.” they responded, in my head.

“Did a tornado hit here a few days back?” I asked.

They confirmed it and my judgmental city slicker perspective was shattered and I was just thankful nobody was hurt and the Tesla charging station was still working, because if it hadn’t been, I’d be living in Haubstadt now!

-Clayon

2024 03 15

Rural Illinois farmland. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

On Banning TikTok

I’m not aiming to make this a news commentary blog with quick takes on current events, but let me take a few moments to jot down some thoughts on this possible TikTok ban legislation currently in the news: 

There’s an evolving summary of America I have in my head that is essentially boiled down to this: America will (more or less) let you do whatever you want unless you fuck with America—then America will kill you.

One of my complaints with America boils down to the killing portion of this summary, in the sense that I think we should be doing less of it. Killing people to solve our problems never seems to work, yet we go back to this game plan repeatedly for reasons I’ve yet to fully understand. Our current misguided killing, being done through our friends in Israel, has grown wildly unpopular in no small part due to the efforts of the fine folks behind TikTok. 

You’d maybe think that, for this reason, I’d be against the banning of TikTok but you’d be wrong. I’ve been in favor of TikTok regulations for what seems like an eternity now; Since before Trump was in favor of banning it, before he “changed his mind” and decided he doesn’t care so much after all.

Part of the problem is how we are discussing the topic as a ban. Scott Galloway put it well by saying we don’t consider 65 mile per hour speed limit signs as the banning of cars, we think of them as a safety regulation on driving, which is exactly how we should talk about implementing new restraints on social media apps (be it foreign-owned names like TikTok or domestic products). Calling it a ban sounds unnecessarily extreme, especially in this time of extreme actions, when having resources to freely vent our frustrations is as important as ever.

That said, it’s the foreign-owned aspect of this issue that is what’s going to lead to this so-called ban on TikTok. Lawmakers were supposedly inundated with calls from frustrated kids who were prompted and connected by their TikTok app in an effort to stop this legislation. Ordinarily, this would be standard operating procedure in our so-called democracy, however, it’s now being seen as the weaponizing of our youth by a foreign power in which we have no control. This, coinciding with the turning of the narrative against our stupid war is what has lawmakers fed up; Turning the social network into an echo chamber of discontent aimed directly at the United States by a foreign interest with a different viewpoint. America is being fucked with!

But how is this justification to outright ban a foreign company—just because you don’t like how they are shining a light on your shady dealings?! Well, my beef with TikTok is more due to unfair business practices (China does not allow US companies to operate within China yet expects us to allow them to operate here) and with social media toxicity generally. I don’t think we should be allowing our youth to use consequence-free, unregulated social media as we do, but since we’re a “free country” and lawmakers shrug their shoulders at the idea of implementing any sort of protection in this regard, we should at the very least ensure these companies, whom we’re allowing to raise our children, are not run by uncooperative foreign actors with motives fully unknown to us. That it takes a shitty war largely of our making is an unfortunate means to an end, I fully agree.

Damn. This took entirely too long to write, still comes off as generally vague and unconvincing, and therefore is why I don’t write commentary on news. Anyway, to distill my thoughts even further, I will say this: I think TikTok should be regulated, as I think all social media companies should have better oversight and far more accountability. I don’t think this country should allow foreign access to our markets without at least some level of reciprocity. The world is an increasingly-complicated-and-increasingly-connected place and the people who control the algorithms have as much power as the people who control the guns. TikTok isn’t going away, there’s too much money at stake, but US leadership has finally seen the light on how vital control of the world’s most popular social network is to the operation of the American Machine, and that is why they will somehow, someway, wrestle away enough control of it to better sleep at night.

And I’m going back to making photos while thinking less about messy geopolitical social media attention wars that are really about money, power, and control of the people.

🎵tiktok chime🎵

-Clayton

2024 01 17

Rural Illinois farmland west of Chicago. November, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

How do you break through and gain an audience in a world where, for example, 3,700,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube every day? Do you post one photo (of farmland!) to an obscure photo blog each day? Well, no. I’m not really doing this to go viral or get a fan base (tho that would be a motivating development!). Some modest goals for this website are:

• Get and stay in the habit of creating images and exploring thoughts just for the sake of creating

• Get better at writing

• Get better at curating and editing my images (I share way too many images typically and mostly ignore sculpting meaning through juxtaposition)

• Have fun and explore new things

If you have any thoughts on things that help you create for the sake of creating, in a world where the proliferation of #content on #socialmedia is such a turnoff, I’d love to hear them!

-Clayton