Chasing Dragons: An Uncommon Memoir in Photographs

Photographer and filmmaker Hayward (Bad Behavior) crafts a Künstlerroman from fractured, poetic text and decades of his own portraiture projects. Starting with his childhood spent road-tripping in the back of the family’s Chevy, Hayward uses the metaphor of “chasing dragons” in his youthful imagination to present his aesthetic philosophy—the “smoke of dragons” which he “inhaled” to find “the essence and enchantment of play, permission, and possibility.” Beginning with fairly standard portraiture, Hayward’s practice moves into photographs of the human body ruptured and made ethereal, the print bent or rent and paint applied to the surface. His later work explores dance and film, as well as “portraits of the collaborative self” in which the subjects (often artists and writers) draw upon and tear apart paper backdrops, creating varied sculptural objects that become as much a part of the work as Hayward’s own technique. The text Hayward runs alongside the images can at times distract with its broad swagger, as when his “way of portraiture opens unlimited possibilities of heart, experience, and a bounty of unexpected truths.” His engagement with literary influences, however—including recurring quotes from Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson—adds some thoughtful complexity to the project. Though there are some weaker moments across the five decades of practice, later images are captivating, and fans of Hayward will appreciate seeing the development of his style so clearly rendered. (Sept.)