2025 02 24
Streator, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Lately, I’ve been pondering excessively about what to focus my energies towards. Fortunately, I think my self-imposed marching orders have more or less been made and I am now on a path, for the remainder of the year at least, to see where it takes me.
One deterrent to creating new work is the internal struggle towards judging the work you haven’t yet created! Will it be unique enough? Will it be original? Will it stand out in a world so saturated with content it’s quite impossible to even comprehend!? The quote below, while clearly written in a time prior to social media, Ai, and content factories, helped bring some sanity to my overworked brain:
"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."
-C.S. Lewis
-Clayton
2025 01 03
This camera is so far gone but I continue to use it nonetheless. I tell myself I like the look the layer of dust is giving me. Honestly, I kind of do. Each time I go to buy a new one, they are not available. Everyone loves the Ricoh, apparently. Plus, spending a thousand bucks doesn’t sound very appealing right now. It’s probably time to attempt a surgery and see if I can’t remove some of this madness. If I fuck it up in the process, maybe it’ll get me to shoot more film again!
While researching the photographer Weegee (for no reason whatsoever!), I learned that he did a bunch of work with prisms later in his career. Interestingly, he did a series of images of Marilyn Monroe where her face is all distorted but you can still tell it’s her. It’s the kind of thing you might find profound in high school art class.
This is why I think I’m making groundbreaking work here with my Dirty-Sensor Ricoh. It’s profound and amazing. Maybe I will start to sell cameras that have dirty sensors to high school photography students!
Oh yeah, the creative resolution post is still in the works. Will get to it, eventually. Probably.
-Clayton
The dust adds visual interest. Somewhere between Streator and Pontiac, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
This camera is so far gone but I continue to use it nonetheless. I tell myself I like the look the layer of dust is giving me. Honestly, I kind of do. Each time I go to buy a new one, they are not available. Everyone loves the Ricoh, apparently. Plus, spending a thousand bucks doesn’t sound very appealing right now. It’s probably time to attempt a surgery and see if I can’t remove some of this madness. If I fuck it up in the process, maybe it’ll get me to shoot more film again!
While researching the photographer Weegee (for no reason whatsoever!), I learned that he did a bunch of work with prisms later in his career. Interestingly, he did a series of images of Marilyn Monroe where her face is all distorted but you can still tell it’s her. It’s the kind of thing you might find profound in high school art class.
This is why I think I’m making groundbreaking work here with my Dirty-Sensor Ricoh. It’s profound and amazing. Maybe I will start to sell cameras that have dirty sensors to high school photography students!
Oh yeah, the creative resolution post is still in the works. Will get to it, eventually. Probably.
-Clayton