Dan Hayon

My photos are quantum particles.

Those which were made fifty years ago were, at the same time, taken yesterday.
Those which were taken in Romania were, at the same time, made in other countries.

They belong to me but, at the same time, are no longer mine. They are small but, at the same time, larger than their frames.

And me, then, who am I?

I am a poor-sighted observer who is constantly searching, in a dark room, for Schrödinger’s black cat, whilst other photographers have already found her.

Waiting for Hayon

And for what do we wait?

Perhaps for the light of reason to coruscate from the crepuscular universe of his singular imagination. Or perhaps for a message of immutable verity to rise from the chiaroscuro depths of his private world.

But we can all call on pretty words and let them swirl upwards like scented smoke. We will wait in vain if we think that the place occupied by these pictures will open to us through the use of words.

Keep, as you look at them, a sense of repeated musical lines in your mind. Hayon himself would admit, if he had a tendency to admitting anything, to having a fondness for serial music. Listen to one theme, look at one picture, it draws you to it or repels you.

If it repels you then walk away. If not then listen to that theme played again, look at another image. The second repeat confirms your interest, draws you closer. You begin to wonder at the third or fourth repeat if your interest will hold.
As the theme builds layer upon layer in your mind, as the image unfolds time and again in your eye, you find yourself hypnotised and transported.

The individual works here are exquisite, the repeated form of their making gives them a symphonic quality which, if you give yourself up to it, will indeed transport you to a world of Hayon’s making.

The odd thing, though, is that once in that world you very soon recognise it as one you know very well but simply don’t notice as much as you could. It doesn’t matter if you see the images with eyes used to looking out at Romanian Streets, Parisian Streets or English Streets. We see the same familiar things. It doesn’t matter that the images appear in books or on screen or in galleries. We see the same familiar things.

Perhaps, it is Hayon who waits, tongue-in-cheek, as the British would have it, for
the rest of us to get the jokes, and the laughs, and the tears, as he plays kiss and tell with the objects he passes each serial day and which his lascivious eye falls in love with.