Original drawing by the infamous Rick Parker @RickParkerArt from photograph by Bob Krasner @BobKrasner
Rick Hauser is a photographer living and working in the New York City area.
He is fascinated by the relationship people have with what many consider insignificant aspects and trappings of their environment. The things we encounter regularly, but too quickly dismiss as unimportant, while in fact these things actually impact our every movement. We spend so much of our time looking elsewhere, that we miss the beautiful visuals right around us.
Hauser’s "UnderFoot" series primarily features manhole covers, the easily and often overlooked, mundane embossments of cities. We walk and we drive over and around them, but notice them only when they rattle their metallic songs; in fact many of them are works of art, original castings by Artisans long since replaced by computerized creators. Though, for Hauser, the new creations are equally intriguing.
A fallen-away traditional darkroom aficionado, Rick enjoyed the process and admires the quality of darkroom developing and printing, but has made a transition from film to digital cameras. Shooting with a Fuji in his early digital days and now almost exclusively with an iPhone, he is as dismayed as fascinated by modern photographic technology: the art of photography, he feels, is in danger of being overshadowed by the cornucopia of imagery accessible at the technician’s fingertips. Resisting this seductive peril is a tacit hallmark of Hauser’s work.