Too Good To Hide: Tony Hayes
“He takes up the invitation to look, but also takes possession without payment – a visual act of shoplifting.” Curator Stephen Clarke on Too Good To Hide, a new exhibition of photography currently on display at Chester’s Rainbow Tea Rooms…
The photographer looks through the viewfinder; an internal mirror guides the eye through a series of lenses that bend light to focus. The process is basic: the photographer looks through the barrel of the camera lens; but it is also complex as light is refracted and reflected to produce an image. Tony Hayes, like many others, started to take an interest in photography with the straightforward act of making family snapshots. Later on, he stumbled across photobooks by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, which revealed to him photography as an art form. This led him to study at Mid Cheshire College (2016-17) and at the University of Chester where he gained his undergraduate degree in Photography; this was followed by a Master’s degree in Fine Art (2017-2021). Currently he is undertaking an AA2A (Artist Access to Art Colleges) residency.
The interaction between looking through a lens and the reflected image provided a metaphor for the American curator and writer John Szarkowski. In his catalogue essay that accompanied the exhibition Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1978), Szarkowski identified the work of photographers – hence the title – as being either mirrors or windows. Photography as a mirror is when the photographer’s own sensibility becomes the subject – a mirror to their emotional state; whereas photography as a window is when the camera is used to explore the world. Arguably, the first approach is subjective self-expression, while the latter is objective documentary. Hayes brings these two approaches together in his project titled Window Dressing (2019). Hayes explored the urban environment through a series of images of shop windows, taking on the role of the consumer wandering about town gazing at the goods on sale. Shop window displays are constructed scenes made for the shopper. The pane of the window is inclusive, enabling the viewer to look into the shop, and also exclusive by protecting the products safely behind glass. In photographing shop windows Tony Hayes takes up the invitation to look, but he also takes possession without payment – a visual act of shoplifting.
Hayes has deliberately included his own reflection in his pictures and so his act of possession is objectively recorded as evidence by his camera. This conjoining of the image and image-maker has its notable precedents in the work of Lee Friedlander and Vivian Maier: there is the scene observed and this is brought together with the self-portrait. At this point Hayes’ pictures move from the objective window, outlined in Szarkowski’s text, to the reflection of a subjective presence that can be understood as an expressive gesture. The viewer is led to consider whether the imposition of the photographer is a sinister act as, in this case, he hovers over mannequins and the faces of models in adverts – he becomes a potential stalker with unknown, perhaps dark, intent. Opposing this interpretation, the bringing together of photographer (shopper) and his subject (products) can be seen as the power of consumerism persuading us to buy into a lifestyle. The caption in one shop window declares: TOO GOOD TO HIDE – a statement about the items on sale rather than the photographer who is consumed in the constructed scene. The shoplifter is caught in the act.
The outcome of the interaction between photographer, camera and subject is the photographic print. A consumed product in itself, the print is not a reflection nor is it something that the viewer sees through, it is an opaque surface. Positioned as the true consumer, the viewer of the print is made aware of the contrivance of the sale-person’s pitch – Hayes has made an objective record of the shop windows for the viewer to analyse. At the same time, Hayes raises questions about his own role in this process: is he the removed observer or is he revealing his own compliance with consumer culture? The bright colours of the window displays are reproduced by Hayes’ photographic prints: a bright green background behind the white legs of two shop dummies; and vivid orange surrounds a gold kimono jacket. Shoplifter becomes sales assistant as the photographer sells the image to the viewer.
The location of Tony Hayes exhibition, Too Good To Hide, is the Rainbow Tea Rooms in the centre of Chester – a place for the shopper to refresh, contemplate items purchased and plan where to visit next. Encountering these photographs in this environment of the café is to provide yet another perspective, as the shopper looks through the shop window from the inside out to the street; the relationship between the two positions is inverted as the outside becomes the subject to be looked at. Likewise, in relation to Hayes’ pictures, instead of the photographer looking through the lens via the viewfinder, his reflected presence is looking back through the viewfinder via the lens returning the gaze.
Stephen Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Art and Design: Critical and Contextual Studies, University of Chester
Too Good To Hide: Tony Hayes, Curated by Stephen Clarke with wall text by Hannah Harry, continues at The Rainbow Tea Rooms, Chester until October 2024
The Rainbow Tea Rooms are situated in the centre of the city at 28 Bridge Street, CH1 1NQ. Opening hours: 9.30am – 5pm weekdays, 9am – 6pm Saturdays, 10am – 5pm Sundays.
All images © Tony Hayes
