Interview with Kevin Hayes

Hey Kevin, care to introduce yourself?

no, not really.

You’ve been splitting a lot of your time between LA and NY as of late. What’s inspiring about each place for you?

i don’t really know if they inspire me.. well maybe new york because it’s not home. i grew up in los angeles, so every time i’m in new york (which is a lot cause i just got a place out there) i feel like i’m out. and you can always find a drink out there, so i’m super fucking down with that. they’re both really great places, but i’m more inspired by my friends in both cities.

I know taking photography seriously is a pretty new thing for you. How did it all start?

i used to play shows around los angeles — just me and a guitar. country tunes and shit. once i had enough songs, i recorded a record. naturally, i needed artwork and i had this photo in mind for it, which was a bunch of shit like toys, records, bats, instruments, tv’s (basically fred sanford’s garage but with the junk strategically placed). then me and a naked woman. so i had my friends nichole and caren help me set up and take this picture. long story short, the photo fucking trumped my heart-broken country songs and people started asking to see some more of my work (which i didn’t have at the time) so i started taking pictures.

What were you doing before you started taking photos?

playing music and my friends and i had t-shirt line called ‘the crazy robertosn’ based on our friend john jermien, the famous homeless roller skater in beverly hills. (big ups john)

What have been some interesting reactions to your photography?

shit.. there’s been lots.

‘no way those are your folks!‘
’why do you take so many photos of shoes and chairs?‘
’how hard are you fucking all the girls you shoot?‘
’why do you take photos of fat chicks?’

the looks i get after people look at some of my photos are better then what they say though.

What do you value in a photograph?

honesty. my favorite photographers wouldn’t really call themselves photographers. i mean, in my opinion i’ll never take photos as good as, let’s say, my mom, because i try to capture moments passing, in a very honest way. don’t get me wrong, with my mom there’s always a whole-hearted, honest, pure magic-type reason for her to pick up a camera in the first place and i feel like you can see that in her photos. feeling the feeling of a mother being proud of her son after he wins a baseball game and taking a picture of it makes me want to cry. i don’t have lots of professional photographers books, but i have a huge collection of strangers’ photo albums for that reason.

You often photograph overweight ladies. Some are even slightly disfigured. Beyond that, in looking through your work, there are definitely some ‘conventionally pretty’ people, but most of the time it seems you’re fascinated with subjects that are either fairly ordinary-looking or just simply unattractive…

i moved to san francisco right after high school and completely fell in love with a few people. one being nichole gawalis who is a wonderful photographer, alex pardee who’s work leaves me speechless, emily jaworski, who’s basically a nameless artist who is just about the most amazing/fucked up person i’ve ever met, and her brother jason who’s literally the best writer i’ve ever read. at the time, alex and emily were completely obsessed with mental disorders, dwarves, knives, birth defects, teeth, and hello kitty. alex had his studio in the living room and he never sleeps, so he was just painting and watching horror films all day, so when i was eating cereal in the morning ‘tales from the crypt’ would be playing while he was painting some bloody mess. it was right when he started making his ‘bunny with’ toys, which are super cute plush bunnies. they were all over our place, it was fucking great! we’re all pack rats so our house was just full of hello kitty shit, we had joel peter witkin photos everywhere, there was paint all over the place, prosthetic limbs, rusty meat cleavers. real fucked up, rad shit. also emily and i were going to this one spot called ‘the magazine’ daily. half of ‘the magazine’ sold back issues of rolling stone and W and shit, the other half sold used pornos.. porn magazines, dvds, dirty snapshots, but they were used, so you could see that there was life lived in all these things, which was pretty gross. on top of that, on the same counter where you paid, you could trade in your old porns like a vintage clothing store. so you saw people trading in some pretty fucked up shit they were done with. it was so weird seeing people hand over cum stained magazines, but at the same time it was truly amazing because these people didn’t give a fuck what you thought. i mean REALLY didn’t give a fuck. it was pretty inspiring in this bizarro way. anyhow, emily and i were both going crazy over porn-type snapshots of obese women. so at this very pivotal point in my life when i was saying bye to my parents and my old friends to start new in the bay, i was around all this fucked up shit while falling in love these strangers and their interests. so of course, once i started taking photography seriously i wanted to take photos of everything i love: heavy-set women, scars, toys. i also feel like if i take a photo and i put it up for people to see, especially in a show, it’s somewhat of a self portrait (god i sound like such a fucking sissy). so yeah, i do feel like an obese woman or some girl with cerebral palsy or simply my parents, but really i haven’t even scratched the surface on what i want to take photos of and as for the “conventionally ‘pretty’ people”, (even though i think all the people i take photos of are pretty) i’m just a normal guy, so naked girls are fucking boss.

What do you find compelling about the mundane, the everyday?

i’m super sentimental and i travel a lot and i like to drink a lot as well.. and really, i feel like i’m just making a huge yearbook of my life. so if i’m in some new town and i’m listening to some fucking TLC slow jam on repeat and i’m drunk and the world is just flawless for a moment and i don’t want to forget it, i’ll take a photo of whatever’s around. be it a bar stool, a urinal, a light switch, my shoes. it’s kind of like an inside joke only i get.

What’s the relevance of the title of your blog, ‘The Dirtiest Little Rainbow?’

i needed a website and a name for it, and when i started thinking about all of this i was solely listening to thelonious monk. at the time when my love for monk turned into an obsession, i couldn’t stop saying “shit, this sounds so dirty”, but it was super fucking pretty at the same time. then i said to myself.. “i want my photos to sound like a monk solo” dirty as shit and pretty as fuck and i don’t know anyone who thinks rainbows are ugly, especially little ones at that, so i said ‘the dirtiest little rainbow’.. sure.

The photos of your parents are some of my favorites. What do you like about shooting them?

haha, thanks! yeah, they’re great, they seem more like my best friends as opposed to my parents. they’re mad funny too, my mom is a cute little jewish woman and my dad is an ebonics-speaking black man who still listens to too short like ‘get in where you fit in’ just came out, but really i just like being around them and i always have my camera on me, so 2+2=4.

Your work pretty much instantaneously started showing up in gallery shows. Do you think your work is conducive to that? How do you feel about galleries as they pertain to the process of making art?

yeah, it’s pretty wild. i don’t really know how it all happened and i don’t know if my work is conducive to that.. i just think some rad people liked my shit and that’s that. i also don’t know how galleries pertain to the process of making art. i don’t really think of shit like that. i just do what i do.

You’ve said to me before that when it comes to photography ‘I have no idea what I’m doing…’ Do you have a better idea now? Is there anything you’re working on stylistically, or are you just trying to keep shooting photos?

yeah, i have a better idea of what i’m doing. when we had lunch and i gave you my zine, i think i was only taking photos seriously for about three months or so. now i’ve got a better idea of what cameras can do and what film i like using best. you know all that kind of shit, but i still feel like i don’t really know much. i mean if you put my knowledge of photography up against someone who knows their shit, it’d look like manute bol standing next to muggsy bogues. but i’m really happy with where i’m at and i feel as though i know what i’m trying to convey and i hope what i lack in technique i make up for in heart.

Anything else?

one time i was sad and i listened to ‘it makes no difference’ by the band 80 times a day for a week straight.

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Be sure to check out more of Kevin’s work at thedirtiestlittlerainbow.blogspot.com

Words by: Matt Jacoby
Kevin’s portrait by: Sean Dejecacion