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TCK Photographer Hayden Greene's cross-cultural take on art

from Spring 2019 - The Military BRAT issue

by Culturs -- the Global Multicultural Magazine

MUST l SEE

Photography by Hayden M. Greene

UK-born Brooklyn photographer, Hayden M. Greene, hails from Trinidad and Tobago. He always had been a fan of surrealist art, and Belgian Surrealist René Magritte is one of his favorites. Greene became aware of Magritte when the artist’s piece, “Son of Man,” was featured in the movie, “The Thomas Crown Affair.”

“Son of Man” is oft considered Margritte’s most famous and compelling painting. The circa 1964 work portrays a man in a dark overcoat wearing a black bowler-style hat as he faces straight ahead whilst standing in front of a low wall with bright blue sea and cloud-filled sky behind. The man’s face is all but obscured by a large, hovering, green apple. In a 1965 radio appearance with interviewer Jean Neyens, Magritte described the essence of the painting in a way to which the Culturs audience can very much relate: “It hides the face partly well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It’s something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing; we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.”

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons the series haunted Greene for decades — it reminds of his own hidden-yet present; visible, but invisible culture. (Greene was born in the United Kingdom to Trinidadian parents, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, USA, at age three, then to Trinidad and Tobago at age nine; and returned to the U.S. at 18

to attend university.) This year, Greene decided to pay homage to Magritte with a project called “Magritte Reimagined.”

The “Magritte Reimagined” project recreates Margritte’s original work as photographs — presenting them with a modern eye. Greene also wanted to pay homage to the history of photography in the same way that Magritte focused on objects from the natural world. As such, many of the reimagined images contain classic cameras and photographic equipment.

Green also worked to include subjects who are members of the nine historically Black Fraternities and Sororities of the National Panhellenic Council (NPHC). This, for the photographer, broadened the scope of appreciation for the original work, exposing it to a wider audience and adding a multicultural flair to work of the Belgian surrealist.

“Magritte Reimagined” represents years of creative work from the award-winning photographer. Greene’s flair for the ironic and use of images to tell stories is born out of a love for spoken word.

See more of Greene’s work in person at Barataria Gallery in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York on 880 Atlantic Ave.

22 Spring 2019 | www.CultursMag.com

SON OF MAN 2018