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Not many household photograph albums open with photos of the dual towers on hearth. But for Nick Haymes, it made good sense. “When 9/11 happened,” he says, “I realised life was very short.” At the time, he was residing in New York, making an attempt to forge a profession, whereas his buddy, colleague and future spouse Lina was coping with the fallout of her earlier marriage. “It made us realise we should probably get together and have a family. It was this huge historical event, but on a very micro level, it also shaped my relationship with my wife and children.”
Chronograph is a pictures e book that runs from these terrorist assaults to the current day, tracing the journey of Haymes’s two sons, Philipp and Lawrence, as they develop from drooling infants into younger males. We are given a ringside seat as arms get damaged, beloved pets die and hairs begin sprouting from armpits. The mundane aspect of life – verrucas, messy kitchens, Lina cleansing out an ear with a cotton bud – is captured in the identical method as birthday events and rites of passage.
“Because we lived in this tiny, 800 sq ft apartment in Manhattan, you don’t miss a thing, all the ups and downs, all the mood swings,” says Haymes. “There was no door slamming, because there was nowhere to go!”
Indeed, we aren’t spared from seeing the kids at their least flattering: “We used to have a running joke where Lawrence would say: ‘You’re the only parent that would photograph me when I’m crying rather than deal with the issue straight away,’” admits Haymes, “but I like to think I was attentive. It was a funny balance because the camera was always around, but it seemed to work.”
There are additionally a number of pictures of the boys bare – not simply working round the home as younger youngsters however as they transition into maturity too. I think most youngsters wouldn’t be cool with this, however Haymes insists he had their approval. “They don’t have an issue,” he says. “I’ve been lucky enough to have some very nice photographers in my household at various times, so they’re aware of the creative process.” He shrugs: “There are bigger themes in the book than child nudity. That was just a part of our daily life.”
Besides, when Philipp and Lawrence attain their teenagers – all bleached hair, tattoos and stubble – they work out an ingenious methodology of revolt. Instead of sulking or turning away from the digital camera, Haymes says his youngsters smiled and put their thumbs up, realizing that the very last thing their dad needed was a posed household portrait. “That was basically their way of telling me to clear out of their lives,” he says.
Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Haymes hoped to check artwork however ended up dropping out. “I took way too many drugs in my 20s and had a bit of a breakdown,” he says. After couch-surfing in London for a bit, he discovered work in a photograph studio, finally aiding Jürgen Teller. In 1999, he packed two cameras right into a bag and determined to strive his luck in New York. It was right here he met Lina, a Jewish refugee who, as an adolescent, had moved to the US together with her mother and father from Ukraine – then a part of the Soviet Union. She was engaged on {a magazine} and gave him a fee that allowed him to get a visa and keep.
Haymes’s personal tough transition from youth to maturity is probably what attracts him to his topics. Between Dog and Wolf captured his highway journeys throughout California and Oklahoma with a gaggle of younger skate boarders. Follow-up Gabe TM unfurled over a few years hanging out with Gabe Nevins, the teenage star of Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park. Unexpectedly, Haymes discovered himself chronicling Nevins’s homelessness and habit within the wake of constructing the film. Dancing on the Fault Line, printed in 2024, was one other mammoth tour, following teenager Love Bailey and her prolonged queer household proper as much as her determination to transition in her 30s.
Haymes continues to be in contact along with his earlier topics: he shot Bailey’s wedding ceremony; Gabe resides a “normal life” now in Oregon; the skaters have youngsters of their very own. Haymes doesn’t intend to foster such deep relationships along with his topics. “I always think, ‘Oh, I’ll just do a nice quick shoot.’ But then I get attached to everybody, they become part of my life. You can become a father figure to them, or a therapist maybe. That’s part of it, and that’s part of the educational process for me, just to be with people and understand them.”
It was throughout Covid that Haymes discovered the time to undergo all his household negatives and work out what to do with them. “It moved me pretty heavily,” he says. “I also had to try to be as impartial as I could because I didn’t want it to be saccharine.”
Did he know, as he took them, that the pictures of his youngsters would find yourself in a printed e book? “I suppose, as a photographer, yes. But I really did it for personal memory, and as a little self-analysis. To think about how I was as a parent. Also, I shoot on film and at the time, in the early 2000s, digital photography had kicked in so I was finding myself more and more unemployable. I thought, ‘OK, I am becoming a house husband.’ But I wanted to be a photographer still, so the family life around me is what I photographed.”
Besides Lina and the boys, the opposite key figures within the e book are Lina’s mother and father Nadia and Mikhail. “They were big characters,” says Haymes. “I had to learn how to become a little more emotional and a little more warm and compassionate.”
One putting picture is of Mikhail sitting with wrapping paper on his head. He’s in a full tracksuit, giving off a barely intimidating Paulie Walnuts vibe. “He was a very loving person,” says Haymes, “but yeah, maybe a bit of a rogue. Whereas my mother-in-law had her issues and I think maybe undiagnosed bipolar disorder. She also became a victim of prescription medication in the US, and we had to deal with that. She was certainly a tough mother-in-law, but at some point you fall in love with her anyway.”
There are some portentous photos within the e book. Scars on Mikhail’s abdomen mirror Lina’s caesarean scars, though we are able to solely guess why he’s been reduce open. Then there’s the pet hamster, who we see being held, adored after which grieved for because it rests in its cardboard coffin.
The e book’s closing passages are extraordinarily shifting, as we see Nadia and Mikhail in hospital collectively, their situations slowly deteriorating. “We were bringing two people to dialysis every day, which was two pretty gruelling years.” At some level, Haymes transformed the house artwork gallery right into a hospice.
In the e book, it seems as if the couple died on the identical time. In actuality it was a 12 months aside and the couple had gone by way of a divorce by that time. “There are things that don’t need to be known,” says Haymes of the story his e book tells. “Everybody has a family album, and through those you only remember certain parts.”
Despite their divorce, Nadia and Mikhail had been buried collectively in Los Angeles. “I’m not sure if Lina’s father is enjoying that right now, but that’s what happened,” says Haymes with a smile.
He says he had been requested to make a pictures e book of his household for 15 years however it was solely when the grandparents died that he realised the challenge was full. “The book starts with death and ends with death,” he says. “It’s gone full circle.”
Interspersed with stunning, closeup photos of flowers acquired on the funeral, we see Philipp and Lawrence standing by the graveside with the urn. “For them to be able to communicate those emotions and to speak at a service, for me that felt like, ‘OK, they’re on their own now. They’ve become men.’”
He pauses, then laughs like solely a father can. “Having said that,” he provides, “they’re still on my Uber account.”
This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its authentic location you’ll be able to go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/aug/24/nick-haymes-sons-entire-lives-chronograph
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