We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Corey Hayes. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Corey below.
Corey, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience is an interesting term to me; If you define resilience as the ability to return to a form after being stretched or pulled, then I think that you have the know what shape you are returning to.
I don’t want people to think I mean an inability to change. Change is the one constant in all our lives and I think true resilience has the elasticity to incorporate change. I’d like to think that as I get older I can change opinions, incorporate ideas that are new to me, yet hold onto some of my fundamental truths about who I am, and my place in the world.
There’s also a great quote in the documentary “Stutz” where he lays out three inescapable realities that no one can avoid; Pain, Uncertainty, and Constant Work. Once you accept that this is the only reality we are guaranteed, you have a clearer view of what you have to work with.
I’ve worked with the organization City Relief (cityrelief.org) in NYC for the past eight years and their mission is to assist people struggling with homelessness to find a path off the street or to the next step of where they want to be. It could be in permanent housing, or it could just be a replacement birth certificate, or a toothbrush. It’s about meeting and accepting them and their needs at that moment, and not where or who we want them to be. I have met so many people that were struggling with poverty and homelessness, and they are so much more than their circumstances. Many of them keep going, trying each day to be their best. They truly inspire me. When I start to lose faith in the people around me or even the world I live in, I remember that I can still make a difference in someone’s life for the better.
I also know that I don’t have to fix everything right now, but slowly each day do the things it takes to care for my body, the people around me, and my relationship with myself.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
My focus these days is someplace between nonprofit and art. I studied graphic design in university and after art directing a few photo shoots I realized that I really liked the collaborative work flow of photography more than that of a designer which is much more solitary. The way I work has evolved over time. Today I’d like to think that I am trying to approach photography as more of an art form. I have done it for the past 25 years and now I’m wondering what else it can be? Currently my photography time is spent either around the issues of homelessness, or small personal projects with people who are interested in collaborating.
In my photo work with people that are homeless, my goal is to show their inherent dignity. That dignity is something that we are born with. It’s not something that is given or taken away, only recognized. I want these images to have that underlying ethos. I carry this same ideal into every photo project I take. The main question I ask the people I collaborate with these days when we are discussing working together is “What do you want this series of images to say about you?” I don’t think that there are many areas in our lives that we get to search for our authentic (a word I think is overused) selves, so I want to create an opportunity for someone to at least think about what a visual representation of that might look like. Often this might look like a story, a personal experience, or a recurring feeling. Then together we’ll try to express this visually. It’s not always successful, but I’d rather come up short from time to time than to not try to reach further.
The images I’m most proud of are when I’ve photographed someone without a lot of makeup or expensive wardrobe and they see themselves as enough. Photos in this moment in time feel so “filtered” or heavily curated, so finding the beauty in ourselves and our differences feels almost revolutionary.
The newest thing happening is that I’m part of a group art exhibit with two friends at W83 in NYC. The theme is about finding hope in the midst of loss.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The first three skills that come to mind are Vision, Competency with your medium, and Patience. I’ll paraphrase a quote I heard recently which was “Know what shape you are going to sculpt before you pick up your tools.” Finding the “shape” was probably the longest leg of my journey with photography. I was influenced by so many other photographers that my work felt like 50 different people. It wasn’t until I decided on the purpose of my work that the “how to get there” fell into place. My faith, work with people experiencing poverty, and a dissatisfaction with how beauty is defined are all things that inform my vision of what I want my images to be.
You have to become well acquainted with your tools. I rarely think about what my camera settings are or what lens can do what, but I focus on what’s happening on the other side of the lens. That took a lot of time and practice. I’m not a tech-head when it comes to photography. I’d say I utilize 75% of what my camera can do, so it’s not about knowing everything. Recently I started watercoloring during the pandemic as a way to do something creative that wasn’t photography and If mastery happens after 1000 hours, I’m probably on hour 150. But I’m loving learning what watercolors can do, trying different papers, and generally just enjoying the learning process of a new art form. If possible, find a mentor! Assisting other photographers was the best teaching I could ask for in learning my tools of photography.
One of my favorite sayings is that you have to suck at something before you get good at something. It takes patience, and silencing your inner critic to keep plodding ahead through the learning stage. And don’t look at someone else’s journey! It’s not about them, it’s about you and learning to run your own race.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Wow. I love this question! This year I’m scaling back the number of new people I’m working with and trying something different. I’ve found three people that I’ll be photographing multiple times during the course of 2024 to see where it goes and if the images are different and more personal in some way. I’ll still take on a few other projects, but this is my main focus for 2024.
But the sort of people I want to collaborate with are people that feel dissatisfaction with what social media is asking of them. People that want to feel self acceptance, not worry about a perceived “perfection”, want to try something that scares them, want to create just for the experience of creating and not for a particular end goal of the audience.
I know I ask a lot from the people I collaborate with, but there are plenty of pretty photos of pretty people out there and I want to strive to create something with a little more depth, and more acceptance of who we truly are. I’m not even going to promise that someone will love the images. I photographed a woman last year without any makeup in a bathrobe who said, “I’ve never seen myself like this before. I think it’s going to take me a while to get used to these photos.” I’m more than okay with that.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.coreyhayesphoto.com
- Instagram: @coreyhayesphotos
Image Credits
Comedian/Actor: Jim Gaffigan Dancer: Noel Olson Actor: Alex Givens Actor: Eunice Bae Musician; Will Bug (Subin Kara Ahn) Vito Dudu Dennis
