Kenneth Hayes – Ciel variable Magazine

Jeff Wall, Photographs 1984–2023 – Kenneth Hayes, Hits and B-sides

Ciel variable 132 - TABLEAUX | Portfolios
Authors: Kenneth Hayes | Artists: Jeff Wall

The retrospective that the MOCA in Toronto devoted to Jeff Wall brought together both his early backlit lightbox works, large-scale tableau photographs, and more stripped-down black-and-white compositions. Like classic rock, Wall’s images are now more than ever treated as historical tableaux, according to Kenneth Hayes.While, in his view, “a scrim of time and familiarity blurs and softens their perception,” the exhibition clearly highlighted the Vancouver artist’s command of composition, framing, montage, and scale.

David Hlynsky, A Focusing Appliance – Kenneth Hayes

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Readings
Authors: Kenneth Hayes | Artists: David Hlynsky

For this book alternating images, reflections, and anecdotes, David Hlynsky drew on his lived experience as a photographer, teacher, and father. Neither annals nor a theoretical essay, “the book reads as notes on a life-long captivation by photography . . . [The images] feature much careful observation and a quick visual wit” writes Kenneth Hayes. He invokes a wide range of authors, from Marshall McLuhan to Jonathan Crary, including Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, to explain Hlynsky’s “postmodern, quirky, and highly self-conscious” work.

August Sander, Sander Sardinia 1927 – Kenneth Hayes

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Kenneth Hayes | Artists: August Sander

[Summer 2025] Sander Sardinia 1927 by Kenneth Hayes [EXCERPT] This tightly focused exhibition presents photographs that August Sander made on his little-known journey to Sardinia in the spring of 1927, just prior to the debut of the presentation of his life-work, The People of the 20th Century, at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, in Cologne, later that […]

Geoffrey James, Canadian Photographs – Kenneth Hayes, A Weakness for Places

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Portfolios
Authors: Kenneth Hayes | Artists: Geoffrey James

Geoffrey James’s Canadian Photographs offer a paradoxical perspective on the vast country that is Canada. Cities and landscapes appear torn between a not always glorious past and an uncertain future.