We recently connected with Corey Hayes and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Corey thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

When I first moved to New York City in 2000, my goal was to make a name for myself. I moved from Austin and my initial plan was to be in NYC long enough to get some solid experience that would allow me to return to Texas and take on high paying jobs in my home state. I was one of the few people at the time that knew the concepts around digital photography at a moment in NYC where digital was just taking off. I became a digital tech and ended up traveling around the world for a few years assisting other photographers until I reached a point where I felt it was time for me to go out on my own. Ironically one of the first jobs that put me on the path of celebrity/editorial photography came from The Austin Chronicle. They contacted me to photograph actor/play write, Wallace Shawn and that helped me to continue to shoot the types of images that interested me the most.

Seven years later I hit a bit of a wall and my wife and I felt it was time to leave New York and attend a Christian ministry school which had always been a dream of hers. It ended being three of the most transformative years of my life. Instead of my faith being part of my life it became the guiding principle. We returned to New York and I felt that I didn’t want to go back to trying to create a name for myself or spend all of my extra time trying to network my way into the next job. I spent about 8 months trying to figure out what was next and one of my best friends emailed me a job description for art director for a nonprofit the helped people dealing with homelessness. I accepted the job and gradually learned more and more about what people experienced living on the street, and the stigma surrounding it. I knew that changing the narrative, and how people think about those that are homeless, would be one of my main goals. I wanted to take the same principles and care I used when shooting celebrities and apply them when photographing people I met at our outreaches. After 7 years of this work I was approached by a few artist friends who encouraged me to show the portraits I had been working on. In 2022 I had my first gallery show of 12 of these images called “Everything Matters” and in 2023 was part of a group show with 3 others artists whose work drew from a similar theme.

Corey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

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? In my work with people experiencing homelessness, my goal is to show their inherent dignity. That dignity is something that we aware born with, not something that is given or taken away, only recognized. I want photograph I create to have this underlying ethos. 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, by I’d rather come up short from time to time than to not try to reach further. The thing I’m most proud of are the moments when I’ve photographed someone without a lot of fancy makeup or expensive wardrobe and they see themselves as enough.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The mission that drives my journey is creating equality through storytelling. Stories hit us in a different way and connect us and our imaginations. Changing someone’s mind or informing them in a non threatening way is where a narrative story has its true power. If you want someone to care about the power dynamics women deal with, or how someone comes to terms with their sexuality, stories have the greatest capacity to instill understanding and compassion. Over the past few years I’ve been trying to find new ways to add words or audio to photo series to give the people I collaborate with more of a voice in the story we are sharing.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

“On Photography” by Susan Sontag has probably had the greatest impact on my work and how I show up as a photographer. She talks about how the main stream use of photography creates a voyeuristic relationship to the world around us. That it keeps us out of the moment while we are busy trying to record what is happening outside of the event. It’s made me question when to reach for my camera, and when to just be present in the moment.

Contact Info:

• Website: coreyhayesphoto.com
• Instagram: Coreyhayesphotos

Image Credits
Jim Gaffigan / Reema Sampat (black jacket) / Noel Olsen (red hair)