Bill Hayward Portraits

From Paul Germain:

I think what Bill Hayward does has some similarities to what you accomplish with your work. In pushing his collaborators to pick up simple utensils and use a different side of the brain, the result is always a different and unique portrait of that person’s identity.

In your case, you seem to push participants to see themselves and their surroundings differently by abandoning all traditional methods of doing so as well. No computers, no notepads, secretaries, tape recorders or post its. Stripping things down to a viceral level, if you will.

Bill has been at this style of photography/portraiture for quite some time and the results have been really amazing. He’s also got a nice size coffee table book out which basically shows his process with a number of public personalities.

Bad Behavior is a radical new approach to portraiture. Rather than photographing his subjects posed in front of the standard, neutral paper backdrop, photographer Bill Hayward boldly invites them to collaborate in transforming the backdrop in any way they choose. Armed with paper, scissors and paint, the subjects create fascinating, often amusing, and always revealing portraits. Some subjects use the backdrop to paint portraits of critical people or figures in their lives, some create landscapes, some write words or phrases, while others create entire stories. Many choose to transform not only the backdrop, but themselves--removing their clothes and/or painting their bodies.

Hayward's subjects are luminaries in a variety of fields: painters, actors, directors, dancers, writers, musicians, and poets.