2025 11 12
Lil Durk’s childhood home. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
While driving around the south side after a photo assignment, my car’s navigation alerted me I was passing Lil Durk’s house. While I was previously engaged with documenting Chicago’s music scene in my younger days, I mostly got out of the scene during the rise of drill, so missed a lot of what Chicago is largely known for these days. I’m not very familiar with Durk, but a quick read of his wiki page is, if anything, fascinting:
On May 31, 2014, Durk's cousin OTF Nunu also known as Nuski was shot and killed.[101] Then, on March 27, 2015, Uchenna "OTF Chino Dolla" Agina, Durk's friend and manager, was also shot dead.[102] On November 6, 2020, Lil Durk's affiliate and fellow rapper King Von was fatally shot outside a nightclub in Atlanta.[103] On June 6, 2021, Durk's brother, Dontay "DThang" Banks Jr, was shot and killed outside of a Chicago nightclub.[104][105]
Chicago has a bad reputation for crime, guns, and murder. Of course these things happen here, but the city is so much bigger and broader than these headlines. That said, reading Durk’s wiki page is a sad reminder of the paths so many of our children take after catching a wave of success through music. So many lives cut down too short. This isn’t something I aim to focus on with my photography, however, it’s also impossible to fully avoid and is a subject worth much closer examination in hopes of finding ways to avoid these violent spirals in future generations.
Summarizing someone’s life through a single sentence on wikipedia does not do him justice, but today Durk sits in prison awaiting trial for murder-for-hire. They took away his key to the city. His childhood home sits, as it has for decades, visibly unaffected by the transcendent highs and brutal lows cast into this world by one child who grew up inside of its walls.
[check out the video below if you want more backstory]
-Clayton
2025 11 11
Hope (on the highway). Chicago, Illinois. October, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
It’s been a busy year and I haven’t been able to work on my Illinois Project much, annoyingly. Because of this, I now have a new project brewing in my head that is closer to home. For now, we’ll call it The Chicago Project. As is the case with all of my photo projects, I’m not really sure, yet, what it is, but I’ve been really inspired by my travels around town and think I can bring an interesting perspective to a subject that has been documented and captured countless times over. Time will tell. For now, there is hope.
-Clayton
2025 11 09
Sunrise (the best one I’ve seen!) over Chicago, Illinois. October, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Recently I wrote about waking up early after being up late, and how as a freelance photographer you don’t really get sick days (see: 2025 10 15). This is the sunset I was treated to on that drive. The photos never do them justice and it’s cringe to post photos of them on your blog.
-Clayton
2025 11 08
On the road. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
One thing I hate about driving is all of the moments I see and miss while manning the vehicle. This lil moment was cute and I was able to somewhat capture it, however, a tighter and higher angle on this scene would’ve made for a more impactful image, I think, with the hard light from the sun lighting up his tattooed-arm and glistening off the action figure. If only there was a girl (possibly named Jessica) hanging out in the bed of the truck, we’d have ourselves a Certified Banger image.
-Clayton
2025 11 07
Where will you go today? Tangible Books. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Recently, while not updating this here blog because I’ve been too busy, I had a modest uptick in traffic (instead of almost nobody visiting, a few people visited). While trying to figure out what all the traffic fuss was about, I noticed that in the last month, the blog has been visited by more visitors from China than here in the US. While I have no idea why this is the case, or if these are even actual humans coming to digitally visit, the fact was interesting to me for another reason altogether.
My takeaway was that, as a well-traveled but still life-long citizen of the USA, I don’t think I fully comprehend the shadow we cast on the rest of the world. I can imagine how differently I would feel about the world if I was the same person I currently am but was born in, say, Montevideo instead of Chicago. Being a very prideful person about the place I call home (I also love Montevideo and assume this would be the case if I was from there), I can imagine my pride would be met with much more frustration upon learning the harsh realities of economics, pop culture, and math if I was a Montevideoan (no idea what term they use but likely not this). With so much money, influence, and people coming from counties other than my own (hypothetical) home, I’d feel the need to accommodate other markets and cultures in order to get noticed, which would likely bum me out.
What is my point? I’m not sure, really, but I like the mental exercise resulting from looking at my traffic from China. The sort of obvious conclusion is that the United States is in decline access to markets is the most important element of gaining success through art — be it sales to people or views on Tik Tok, you need other people.
To all this, I say: 很高兴认识你！
-Clayton
2025 11 06
Avedon book, bought used. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Argh! I’m still so behind on posts!
Mostly, it’s because so much of my time lately has been dedicated to books. Photobooks. Our popup shop Realm Books is in the midst of a big year end push to see if we can become a legitinmate business. It’s fun, it’s hard, it’s a lot of learning and figuring things out. This weekend (November 14-16), we have our first book fair. You can find us tabling at Staple + Stitch, which is very exciting to me and will be really telling in terms of how the business end of things can work.
Anyway. This here blog has a zine dropping tomorrow with its namesake, so I need to get this thing back on track. I’ve got tons of personal work to share and this will be the place for it in the coming weeks. Thanks for stopping by…
-Clayton
2025 11 04
That Tiny House. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
That Tiny House. You can’t not take a photo of it.
-Clayton
2025 11 03
Moon in the early night sky. Chicago, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
-Clayton
2025 10 31
Shoes. Chicago, Illinois. August, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Happy (nine days post) Halloween! I’m slowly (but maybe not surely) catching up on my daily posts!
-Clayton
2025 10 30
Famous thing in Chicago, Illinois. July, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
It’s kind of interesting that, being a Chicagoan all of my life, I almost never make images in the popular tourist places in my own town. This scene, had I stumbled upon it in another place I was less familiar with, would immediately become a photogrpahy obsession. Here, however, it’s mostly something to avoid. Maybe I should better embrace these places? If I get into the “Chicago Project” I have brewing in my brain, it will definitely be worth revisiting.
-Clayton
2025 10 27
Reach for the light. Chicago, Illinois. April, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
My first photozine project is now at the printer and due out next week (November 15th at Staple + Stitch, to be precise). It has been a fun (and wildly time consuming for being relatively simple) project and I hope just the beginning of many more printed works. While I have many bigger concepts for more “proper” photobooks dancing in my head, I’m easing into this by committing myself to two more smaller-scale personal zines next year. In a sense, I’m riding with training wheels while I learn more about the processes involved, of which there are more than I previously had considered.
If you want to pre-order the zine and snag a free print as a thank you, you can do so here.
-Clayton
2025 10 26
Behind-the-scenes. Chicago, Illinois. July, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Time keeps on slipping past me this year! I’ve been meaning to get up another post about how I’ve fared with studio portraits this year (spoiler: poorly). Likley, because things got so tough, it’s why I’ve been focusing on other things. That said, I’m still aiming to do both one more run of portraits this year and will get around to writing more about the difficulties when I find the time.
-Clayton
2025 10 25
Wires. Chicago, Illinois. July, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Everything is connected. Humans have been busy the past century connecting everyone together as best we can, in new ways we continue to imagine. While convenient, surely this might also explain some of the madness going around lately?
-Clayton
2025 10 23
Sidewalk closed, be back soon? Chicago, Illinois. October, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
As always seems to be the case, This Here Blog has (for some reason — not being self-deprecating, just honestly don’t know any details) gained some attention recently. I’m not sure where the eyes are coming from, but they’re coming much more that usual. Of course, I’m absolutely buried in work, without a moment to spare to post new images and catch up on days (it’s October 28th as I write this, not October 23rd). Ho hum; so it goes. While in the midst of un-burying my studio both physically and metaphorically, I’ve also been editing personal images I made back in July (on top of the client edits, calls, treatment writing, etc). So yeah, I’m roughly four months behind on life. Be back soon.
-Clayton
2025 10 22
Brad and Lenny. Chicago, Illinois. May, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Sure, cell phones make calls, however it might be more fitting to rename them cameras. I’d wager they get far more use making images of our pets and kids (and doom scroll social media) than they do make calls.
-Clayton
2025 10 21
Cool tree, bro. Chicago, Illinois. August, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Oftentimes, I’ll make friends with a tree and visit and photograph it regularly. This is my new bud, which I esp love because of its wily bark trunk.
-Clayton
2025 10 20
No exit. Chicago, Illinois. July, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Between cleaning up the studio after a morning shoot in preparation for a bookshop popup tomorrow morning and studio event tomorrow evening, this video (below) popped into my feed and was thoroughly enjoyed by myself. As I’ve been unable to travel much these days in lieu of giving myself too many jobs back home, I really enjoy watching how Mike Okay traverses the world by himself with minimal plans or support. It’s an extreme way to do it, sure, but it often illuminates the positive side of humanity in ways that are hard to articulate in words. Maybe I’ve shared his videos here before, I forget. But if you haven’t yet seen one of his travelogs, I highly recommend checking the out.
-Clayton