AGENT ORANGE

A collection of photographs by Sam Hayes

Essay By Bradley Carbone

“You’ll never guess what happened,” the good storyteller begins. Maybe it’s, “I watched a shark bite a man in half.” Maybe the follow up is, “They just came out with Cherry Coke Zero with lemon!” Either way, the hyperbolic opener works. Do it right, and you have enough attention to break the ice, get the listener to like you, or to buy some time until the rest of the dinner party arrives.

Sharing-as-extreme works. Generally, people like paintings that seem hard to do, photos that are big, and movies when things explode. Feed your audience the “WOW,” and the simple fact that there is a high contrast between the storyteller’s enthusiasm and the audience’s daily experience gets attention.

Florida is a land of extremes, rich with stories that make it a creative playground for the artist willing to run into the fire. When it’s hot, it’s really hot. When it rains, the streets flood. The people with guns have a lot of them. The snakes are big. Florida man is real, and so is Florida woman, Florida off the grid compound, Florida money laundromat, and Florida plastic surgeon. Florida is the land of the most free, in the craziest way.

But there is a difference between, “Look at how big this boat is,” and, “Look at this boat.” The former feeds you the reaction, “Yes! – LIKE.”

“Look at this boat,” asks you to respond for real. Sometimes that response is nothing.

Sam Hayes tells image-based stories that lead you to the water, but stop short of grabbing you by the reins to drown you. And he does it in South Florida, one of the

most, “GET IT? SEE ME?” places in the world.

Sam has only just begun to tell the story of this insane place, and we can hope that he continues to do so with that most subtle of winks.

Bradley Carbone