DESIGN BY SITEHOUSEDESIGNS.COM | PHOTOS BY MARK HAYES.
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MarkHayes
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Photography
Photographs aren't simply pictures but
time machines. They bring us back to who we where, who we loved, and connects us to family we never knew.
Then it sank in on me of just what a debt I owed to these photographers, some professional, some amature's, all of whom now long dead and burried. It was their work that tied this all together, that awakened these memories long forgotten of growing up in Vermont.
It also sunk in that my commercial advertising stuff was hollow and empty when compared to these photos, but not so the wedding photography which I had recently begun falling in love with.
Wedding photography is my way to pay it forward I guess. The hope that 100 years from now some piece of my work will be discovered and appreciated by someone trying to reconnect with their family ancestry.
Growing up my parents divorced when I was young, my father moving out of state and my contact with the "Hayes" side of my family dwindled to a bare trickle. Holiday cards form my father, Mark Hayes, his older brother my uncle Jim Hayes. That was pretty much all and who I knew from the Hayes family.
A few years back, I was doing mostly commercial and fashion photography at the time, my uncle Jim gave me an amazing gift. A written family history and an old photo album with pictures going back to around WWI.
It was an amazing experience reconnect with my own history and family members through these photos. To learn I was the 4th generation (at least) to be named Mark Hayes and of course of my families ties to the IRA and Sinn Fien.
Seeing pictures of my father has a running, laughing, care free little child. So much different than the memories of my parents fighting and yelling at each other which seemed to be the only memories I could easily remember on my own.
Pictures from my own childhood that triggered memories so long forgotten. Days long forgotten, like my grandmothers house, her little bichon dog who looks so much like my own Porthos, and of course those pre AC/DC knickers.
My Passion