Chasing Dragons: An Uncommon Memoir in Photographs

by Bill Hayward

Overview

As a child, Bill Hayward traversed thousands of miles of American highway, peering out the window from the backseat of his father's 1940 Chevy. On the road, Bill and his sister, Janet, embarked upon an epic journey of the imagination, making believe they were "chasing dragons" through vast, shifting landscapes.

This playful, childhood undertaking has had a profound impact on the life of the prolific, multimedia artist. For more than fifty years, Hayward has endeavoured to bring light, through his art, to the strange and wondrous forms that lie hidden beneath the surface of things, revealing what is left behind when conventions fade away. In the artist's own words, "I inhaled the essence and enchantment of play, permission, and possibility... I came to understand that the truly meaningful will be experienced outside the known world of fact and frame."

Presented here is a stunning visual autobiography, chronicling more than five decades of artistic vision. Arranged in five acts, Chasing Dragons traces the evolution of Hayward's work from traditional portraiture to increasingly abstract and altered images, figurative paintings, dance, performance, and film. Join Hayward on this creative odyssey, exploring the fundamental elements of humankind and probing the mystery the lies at the core of your own being.

Artist Bill Hayward works in a diverse array of media, including photography, film, painting, music, sculpture, and dance. In all cases, Hayward's work is primarily inspired by the drama of living forms. To these ends, his work explores the human body - its outward appearance and innermost feelings - often entering territories of vulnerability and emotional risk. Hayward's work has been exhibited in galleries and performance centers across the United States, as well as in France and Germany, including Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College (Allentown, Pennsylvania), Fashion Night Out (New York City), Center for Performance Research (Brooklyn, New York), The Wynwood Art Fair and The Art Live Fair (Miami, Florida), The Tribeca Grand (New York City). Hayward is co-founder of The Maine Photographic Workshops (now the Maine Media Workshops), wherein he taught Master Class Workshops in portraiture and the creative process. He has also taught Master Classes at the International Center of Photography (New York City), YC; Palm Beach Photographic Workshops (West Palm Beach, Florida), and the Art Kane Photo Workshops (Cape May, New Jersey). The artist s previous books of photography include Cat People (Doubleday, 1978) and Bad Behavior (Rizzoli, 2000). Hayward lives and in works in New York City and Montana.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780989170499
Publisher:	G Arts LLC
Publication date:	08/07/2015
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	8.80(w) x 10.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Bill Hayward is a photographer, painter, filmmaker, and performance artist, whose work is inspired by the drama of living forms. Hayward's work has been exhibited in galleries and performance centers across the United States, as well as in France and Germany, including Martin Art Gallery at Muhlenberg College, Fashion’s Night Out, Center for Performance Research, The Wynwood Art Fair, and The Art Live Fair. He is founding member of The Maine Photographic Workshops and has taught Master Classes at the International Center of Photography, Palm Beach Photographic Workshops, and the Art Kane Photo Workshops. The artist's previous books of photography include Cat People (Doubleday, 1978) and Bad Behavior (Rizzoli, 2000). Hayward lives and in works in New York City and Montana.

Editorial Reviews

07/27/2015
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.)

Publishers Weekly

Uncommon it is, and beautiful, and quite possibly the first of its kind. Chasing Dragons documents in photographs, paintings, and film stills, Bill Hayward’s evolution over five decades from portrait photographer to abstract painter, filmmaker, and multimedia artist.

Best American Poetry - Stacey Harwood

One of the beauties of Chasing Dragons (hunting the dragon smoke of the imagination) is (going back to the patterning, grouping, repetitiveness of the images) that you can see Hayward, the artist, thinking without words, thinking with the images themselves, making and remaking, with slight variation, the same gesture, scene, idea. The effect is mesmerizing; rarely do you get to see so many materializations of the same artistic thought.

Numéro Cinq, October 2015 - Douglas Glover