We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jay Halsey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jay below.

Alright, Jay thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Many of my photo projects focus on collaborating with friends as subjects by using masks, projectors, and/or unusual/juxtaposing environments as settings.

My first mask experiments were two series utilizing a handful of different pig masks and gas masks with friends and even friends’ children wearing the masks in their homes and urban and rural plains areas. The results ranged from surreal and playful to dystopic science fiction to horrific and cinematic scene shots, and a combination of all those feelings and aesthetics. One of my proudest projects with a close friend utilized white screen projections of my landscape photos as the background of timelapse shots of my friend in various poses and masks.

My most current effort is a writing and photography collaboration with my partner, Hillary Leftwich. Over the past several years, we tossed around a handful of ideas that would utilize writing contributions from both of us but none of them really got beyond the talking stages. Then, a few weeks back, as we were sipping beverages on our back porch, we came up with the idea to shoot photos in and around our immediate neighborhood during the early dawn hours with her being the (mysterious) human subject without any direct face shots. The photos themselves will then act as prompts for our short, written pieces that will eventually be printed along with each photo in a published collection. That’s the hope at least. At the time of this interview, we’ve completed two shoots that I’m absolutely in love with, with six to nine more locations planned to go into late fall.

Our individual aesthetics and input of what we want from the project jive well. And, not only do I get to photograph, and then write with my favorite person, but this project also acts as the perfect outlet to document all the beautiful and damaged characteristics of our blue-collar neighborhood, which is an important opportunity for me.

Jay, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was born and raised around Dayton, Ohio, which used to be a car, truck, and bus manufacturing epicenter of factories before the 2000s when they all eventually moved out in search of cheaper labor in other cities and countries. The working-class/blue-collar aesthetic and way of life was and still is a big influence on the perspectives I focus on in my writing and photography.

In 2007, I moved out to Boulder, Colorado with my then-partner and it was a huge culture shock for me. The city backdropped by mountains felt clean and pristine, but also very homogenized to the point I found it difficult to adjust. My creative endeavors suffered immensely, and I wasn’t producing anything. I was bored, hadn’t yet found my people, and my day job was spirit-crushing.

I finally landed a job after my first two years living out here at a nearby community outreach center that largely helped a houseless population and those struggling to get by on very little income and lack of healthcare. That line of work, along with befriending a local photographer, rekindled my writing and photography and I haven’t looked back since.

All of my experiences in Dayton, combined with my contrasting experiences of extreme affluence when I moved to Boulder, Colorado, culminated in the publication of my first collection of photos, poems, and prose, Barely Half in an Awkward Line, with Really Serious Literature press in October of 2022. And now, a second, expanded edition is forthcoming from Agape Editions’ Haunted Doll House imprint in the fall of 2023. I’m proud of the collection and thankful that publishers want to get it out into the world.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

In my mind, self-satisfaction is always the main driving force for most creatives in their artistic ventures. We want the world to see or hear what we feel is important to show or say, and I think selfishness is a key component in accomplishing creative goals. I don’t feel bad about it.

That said, I don’t write for writers, and I don’t shoot photos for photographers. My main goal in creating my words and photos is always to reach an audience that might be a little more disenfranchised than most; to generate pieces for people who don’t have regular access to art and literature, or even realize certain types of art and literature can and does cater to those far outside of academic settings. I want to destroy the gatekeepers in the literary and arts communities.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The major lesson taught by teachers and more well-known artists I remember growing up was that we need to take advantage of, and be ready for, any inspirational moment or scene, and to create something from it whenever possible. Like, writing down your dreams, always carrying a camera to get unexpected shots, or always journaling in your notebook every day, etc. As I grew older, along with the mounting struggles I was facing in life, I realized that being able to take advantage of inspirational moments to create, or just finding any time to create, or even feeling inspired at all, was a massive point of privilege that a lot of people, including myself, simply do not have. And the creatives talking about the necessity and urgency to create never talked about the privileges that allow someone to live in that way.

It took me a long time, well into my late 30s, to understand that just because I wasn’t as prolific of a creator as others I looked up to, and rarely felt inspired to create, did not mean that I wasn’t talented in my own way and didn’t also have a worthy voice that needed to be heard. I now have processes in place to intentionally schedule times to write at home and/or go out on photo excursions. And if those times fall through due to life, I’m getting much better at not feeling like a failure, just the human I am.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://500px.com/jay_halsey
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yeslah.yaj/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jagainst
• Other: https://www.westword.com/arts/denver-author-jay-halsey-barely-half-awkward-line-15338942

Image Credits
Portrait of Jay Halsey is credited to Sarah Sebright All other images are by Jay Halsey