Utility lights are clipped to the metal grid that holds the ceiling tiles. Each light points to a frame containing a 24×30 print of his photos. The light hanging above his desk illuminates the rim of his glasses that bounce every so slightly up and down, as he animatedly tells me the story of his life, without pausing except for once when I gave him permission to take a sip of coffee. The day before, I had asked him if I could interview him about a gallery show in Havana, Cuba that his work will be shown in next month. I ask him to start by telling me where he’s from and how he got here. He laughs and says “oh we’re going way back,” and he jumps right in.
Aaron Hardin, professor of photography, grew up in rural Arkansas, where everyone and their mother were apparently in the rice business. His family moved to Brighton, Tenn., early on, and he claims that is where he really grew up.
He waves his hands back and forth and in circles as he tells me about his arrival at Union in 2003 as a biblical studies major and his desired pastoral career. Then he tells me about how after being taken down by both his Greek and Intro to Bible Studies classes, he decided maybe vocational ministry just wasn’t his thing. He makes a face like he smelled something less than fragrant.
Hardin talks about how his first film production class with Chris Blair (the Comm department legend) really sparked something in him and piqued his interest. Then there was the time when he finally took a photography class during the J-term of his senior year.
“It rocked me. It absolutely rocked me. Being able to not just fabricate a story, but discover stories that were in real life was just really invigorating to me,” he said. “There was something about staring at a photograph and just pausing life that really just captivated me.”
He looks off as he remembers what it was like to finally get a job a few months after being out of school. It was a little scary until then. He nods toward me and raises his eyebrows, and his voice holds a bit more weight when he says how thankful he was, and still is, for that job.
I look to the right of Hardin’s desk and see a photo of his wife in golden light, holding their child on a rocking chair, and I think I can picture her exactly how he explains her, encouraging him to apply for a position as a photographer at the Jackson Sun.
“When it comes to ‘you need to go with it,’ my wife is that person,” he said. “I’m the person that says ‘uhhh, maybe not..’ and she’s the kind of person that says, ‘Why are you still talking about it?’ I need that person in my life.”
Hardin’s career as a photographer began there at the Sun. He was hired as a staff photographer and was promoted to head photographer within a short period of time working there. He remembers what it was like to develop his skill, but after shooting a few really difficult stories, he was left with a heavy burden and a lot of questions like, What am I leaving behind? and Is the work that I’m making what I want to leave behind in the world?
“I didn’t want my lineage to be murder scenes,” he said. “So I had a friend who was doing work in Ethiopia… it was actually my mentor when I was fresh out of college and I just randomly called him.”
He makes a pretend phone with his hand and holds it up to his ear as he tells me about calling up his friend. About how the next trip was in two weeks and how his wife encouraged him to do it. About how his boss at the Sun was so good to him and let him take time off to go. About how the experience changed his life, and how he was finally shooting for himself and under his own conviction.
Hardin shrugs his shoulders and chuckles as he says, “Instead of bringing a digital camera like every normal person would, I brought an all manual Leica film camera, all manual… and a bag full of black and white film because I wanted to do it, and that’s how I wanted to do it. And nobody said anything. They let me do it so I did it!” He laughs again. “And when I made that work, that was the best work I’d ever made in my life cause I had full freedom.”
That experience led him to work for the same non-profit stateside for a few years. Hardin says he was working for at times around $600 a month, and his wife was picking up odd jobs here and there.
“We were very poor, but it was the first stages of: we are doing what we feel like we should be doing in the world,” he said.
Hardin runs his fingers through his beard as he talks about how he was making work reactively, but wasn’t thinking about why he was making it. He leans back in his chair and swivels back and forth, fumbling around with his coffee tumbler as he tells me about his frustration with not knowing where to go from there. He says he did not have a philosophy or understanding to go along with his actions.
“My actions were not necessarily bad or wrong, they were just ignorant. I was just very, very ignorant at the time,” he said. “It was leaving me very empty feeling, because I knew I needed more. I wanted more. I was still hungry, and I didn’t know the words to use to say what I wanted. I literally didn’t have the language to articulate what I wanted with my work and with my life.”
Hardin shrugs again, and his eyes get a little bigger behind his circular glasses. He tells me that one of his friends suggested graduate school to him, an idea which he initially rejected. “I was just like, ‘That’s silly. Why would I borrow money to go to graduate school where I would not fit?’”
But the more he thought about it and researched it, he decided he would just go for it and apply, with no art background at all.
As he remembers sitting down with the chair of the department, he leans forward with his elbows on his desk. Hardin remembers the director telling him, “You know that grad school and art school is for people that have money, right? Do you still want in?” And he smiles as he tells me that he replied, “I don’t know what else I can do with my life. I need more and this is where more is.”
Hardin credits his philosophy and his identity as a photographer largely to the rigorous program at the Hartford Art School. He claims that out of being beaten down and challenged came the best work he’d made in his entire life.
“I know what I’m about. I may not know what my next project is necessarily, but I know how to work in the artist that I am, and how to make work, and how I make work,” he said.
He laughs as he remembers how tough it was. He laughs about how he and his wife found out they were pregnant a week after he started grad school. He says his life was insane and he doesn’t know how they made it through, other than there being provision outside of his hands.
While he was in graduate school, an adjunct teaching position opened up at Union, so in classic Hardin nature, he decided to take a stab at it and apply. Hardin smiles and says he had never thought about teaching, yet anyone can tell that his brain holds a vast pool of knowledge about photography and much more. He also has a deep passion for the craft.
“He is a culture maker on a grand scale,” said Web Drake, communications department chair. “Our students are blessed to have him as a professor and mentor. The department is lucky to have him as a colleague and friend.”
Hardin received the adjunct teaching position right around the time he was completing his study at graduate school. In a natural progression, he moved into full-time teaching.
“I graduate and then two weeks later, I’m a prof,” he said. “And it’s been amazing. I have great students.”
He pauses and looks into his Tumbler, and I realize that he isn’t going to take a break from talking unless I say something (because I’ve literally only asked one question up to this point), so I tell him he can take a drink, to which he replies, “ah, I’m almost out,” and takes a swig.
“So you’re going to Cuba…” I say. He laughs and makes a joke about how long-winded he is but says it’s my fault because I asked for the whole story.
“Okay so the Cuba thing happened because one of my grad school cohort peers had worked out this group show with our cohort with a lot of the work we had made during grad school, and some after grad school.”
He explains that their cohort was pretty tight and did a small gallery show in New York together that was very successful. That same grad student who had organized the previous show had a contact in Cuba, a relationship that birthed an idea to put up the same show from New York into a venue in Havana.
In a few weeks, Hardin and a few of his peers will be flying down to Cuba to install and introduce the work to the Cuban community. He also tells me that the group wanted to do more with their time in Cuba than just show work, so they decided to do a few additional things: hold a workshop on how to make photobooks and begin a library of photobooks in Havana for the art community there.
Hardin energetically explains his interest in Cuban photography to me.
“Because they’ve been isolated from a lot of the western world, a lot of the artists there have learned to make with what they have… I don’t know a lot of Cuban photographers, but the one’s that I’ve seen, it’s amazing what they’ve done with what they have… which I find invigorating,” he said.
“I’m typically, in our group, the person that does all of the building of things and hammering, so when we were talking about who was going to go over and who was going to play what role, the beginning of the month was going to be the install. I’m going over on that team, which is just three of us, to hang the show and be there for the gallery opening and talk about the work.”
He explains that the next small group of photographers will arrive in Cuba at the end of the month to teach the book-making workshops, in order to start a photobook culture there. They will also be bringing a “big, huge stack of books” to contribute to the introduction of the photobook library in Havana.
Hardin tells me that quite a few of his cohorts have international backgrounds, and therefore he is even more excited to see what being in Cuba and showing work there means from a non-US perspective, since the US has such an interesting, strained relationship with Cuba.
“Politics aside, I’m more concerned with what culture am I going to create with my art, and also how can I encourage others to be really mindful of what they’re doing with their work and encourage people to make work that is thoughtful and under conviction, and free to benefit the world that they live in, even if that world is very different than mine.”
When I ask how his wife feels about him going, he reminds me that she’s the thumbs-up person and that he is the one who worries. He tells me that they thought about trying to figure out a way for her to tag along, but that eventually they decided that she should stay with their child, because he doesn’t want both of his child’s parents to be in another country.
“I just can’t do it. I wish I was a little more laid back but I’m not. If something happens, I want there to at least be one parent left. I take my responsibility as a father as much more important to me than my success as an artist.”
He raises his eyebrows and talks about how he doesn’t exactly know what to expect when they get there. He says that it will be interesting to see if Hurricane Irma has affected the area around the venue and if his AirBnB is still in livable condition. “I’m not just walking into Havana, I’m walking into Havana post-Irma. And I want to be open and receptive if something is given to me to receive there.”
He tells me he has already thought about the kind of work he wants to make while he is there. He despises typical touristy pictures, and he tells me that he refuses to take a photo of old cars and colorful buildings, or of an old woman smoking a cigar.
“Apparently all the old ladies smoke big cigars in Cuba. That’s not really my conviction. When I’m making my work, I have a more universalist approach to any culture.”
He views the cuban women smoking cigars like he views his neighbor down the street.
“There’s no such thing as exotic anymore. It’s just people and stuff. And they all have beautiful value.”
