Photographer Pierre Hauser is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the series ‘Close Looks’. To see Pierre’s body of work, click on any image.

Artist Statement:

I grew up in a home with a darkroom and I studied photography in high school and college. But for years thereafter, I forewent my primary artistic outlet, as I worked in journalism, publishing, and non-profit work. I only took photos intermittently. So, in September 2009, I committed myself to taking at least one photo a day (and have persisted in doing so ever since--much of the time taking many more than one photo). The original idea was to provide myself with discipline. As it turned out, the result was the opposite: freedom. Taking daily photos--on my way to drop my kids at school, walking to meetings, or just idly wandering my adopted city of New York--has let me turn off the hyper-rational, word-cluttered part or my brain and let my eye take over and lead me. And my eye has led me to new and interesting places, to less familiar sources of beauty in our much-photographed city. My eye has helped me discover what interests me most, and gradually, several series have taken shape. In my Puddle Scapes series, for instance, I capture flickering watery reflections of pedestrians and skyrocketing skyscrapers and combine them with the found geometry of the street: sidewalk cracks, rusty curb lining, and the bold lines of traffic markings. In my architectural photos, I use a long lens to flatten building shapes and adjacent shadows into semi-abstract patterns. In my compost series, I attempt to frame pulsing organic vitality in still lives found among the compost collection sites scattered around the city.

In my Close Looks series, my eye has felt the influence of being raised by a painter mother who filled our home with copies of famous abstract paintings. In this series, I have found myself intentionally paying homage to favorite abstractionists or, less consciously, snapping shots of real-life New York that could be abstract paintings.

Artist Bio:

Pierre Hauser is a photographer who was born in San Francisco but now lives in New York, where he concentrates on cityscapes, street scenes, found abstracts, and many lesser-known features of the much-photographed city. His work has appeared in numerous groups shows. He has done documentary projects in Liberia (portraits of Ebola survivors and orphans) and Bangalore, India (photos of the environmental and social problems resulting from the city's rapid expansion into a tech capital), both of which led to solo shows. And in both 2021 and 2022, he was named a member of YourDailyPhotograph's Hot 100--a list of up and coming photographers.

All images and text © Pierre Hauser