Jaine N. Hayward is a photographer and graphic designer living and working in the Boston area. After receiving her Bachelors in art and English from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in 1990, studying photography under Gary Hallman and Jim Henkel, she moved to Boston and began a career in medical photography and eventually graphic design while actively pursuing her landscape photography. Her work has been represented by the Harvard Cooperative Society's Originals Gallery in Cambridge, MA and the Van Ward Gallery of Ogunquit, ME. She has had a solo exhibit at the Jamaica Plain, Firehouse Multicultural Arts Center, Gallery 659, Emerging Artist's Gallery, and has also shown at the Cambridge Artist Cooperative, and Zona Gallery, Cambridge, MA and the Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, MN.

I began my landscape work in 1990 as a reaction to and against the large format pristine landscapes being done by my colleagues at the time and that have been hailed by the art historical canon as archetypes of great landscape photography. Instead of refining the image to maximize detail by using a large format camera, I have chosen to explore what happens when you break down the detail, using a 35mm camera and 3200 speed film.

The resulting photographs share certain qualities found in both impressionist painting and the pictorialist tradition of photography, though they do not share the sentimental romanticism that often accompanies these genres. Just as clarity and sharpness have been defining features of traditional large format photography, film grain, tone and texture are integral elements of my work. Printed large, the photographs look like pencil drawings or lithographs. Printed small, the delicate nature of the grain structure yields a texture that is at once soft, yet precise.

As I began to better understand the physical qualities of my prints, my imagery evolved to compliment and play off of its inherent drawing-like nature. Sky and water, fields and sand all take on a unique feel when transformed by the film grain. I find in their black and white grainy nature, a moodiness and solitude that resonates with my experience of being alone in the vast and quiet spaces of the landscape.

Though my work began as a reactionary act, I find a peace and solitude in the forms, space and relationships in the landscapes I photograph. Subtle patterns, both natural and manmade reveal themselves in the act of looking and framing. The capturing of an image is a poetic act-one of reverence and contemplation where the intellect is fully attuned, dialoging with the deeper, inner self.