DEVENEY, KAYLYNN

Diptych from The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings, 2008
Archival ink jet print
Each image 7 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches on 11 x 14 inch paper
Signed Edition of 50

(United States, b. 1967)

While living in Wales in 2001 KayLynn Deveney noticed her older neighbor, Alfred Hastings, outside his apartment watering his garden, going to the grocery store, and sometimes just watching the activity on the street. Deveney eventually began photographing Hastings’s daily routines, and then she asked him to caption the images in a small notebook. The perspectives of photographer and subject intertwine: Hastings’s commentary adds depth to the narrative suggested by Deveney’s images, and in some cases provides an idiosyncratic interpretation of the depicted moment. Like the series more broadly, this diptych evokes both the patterns that make up Hastings’s days and the small surprises that punctuate them. In the first image Hastings is folding laundry just behind his hanging pajamas, while the second image reveals his clever use of a rubber band to prop up an ailing daffodil in a teacup. 

Deveney received her BA in journalism from the University of New Mexico (1989) and holds an MA in documentary photography from the University of Wales (2000), where she is currently pursuing a practice-based PhD in photography. Deveney was an artist in residence at Lightwork, Syracuse, in 2006 and has had exhibitions in the United Kingdom and the United States. Her book The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings was published by the Princeton Architectural Press in 2007.