Nick Haymes / THE LAST SURVIVOR IS THE FIRST SUSPECT

A story that mixes the joy of documenting friendship and bonding, and a sense of terror that ultimately leads to a series of tragedies. A collection of photographs by Nick Haymes, a visual artist and photographer currently based in Los Angeles who presides over the American publisher and gallery Little Big Man. This collection of works is both a celebration and an expression of mourning. Filmed between 2005 and 2009, this project tells the story of a friendship between young friends based in two different locations: Southern California and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Below is the Japanese translation of the preface of this book
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I always knew that I liked people. I like people... There were several groups at school and I would go back and forth between them. Everyone was attractive to me. Each one had a nuance, something special, and for some reason people all shared it with me. I had mild Williams Syndrome. And I liked school and art teachers and girls. For six years as a teenager, I went to school with a girl every day. The child slept with everyone except me. I got along well with everyone, but I didn't have confidence. So I dabbled in drugs. I stopped drawing. I stopped going to school with her. I stopped going to school. And I found a friend who is really important to me. Three years later, when I found out I was adopted, my brain completely broke. While I was sweating through rehab and dealing with delusional psychosis, no one came to visit me. I lost the desire to write and draw, and I was unable to overcome my newfound embarrassment and awkwardness, which continues to this day. So I grabbed my camera and decided to hide. It was a new way of being sociable yet silent, loving yet distant. It became a barrier that allowed me access to others while I dealt with my own emotional scars. It worked and still works.
 
I met Josh and Mikey at a Dim Sum place just off Canal Street. The two guys from California were casually dressed, and Mikey stole the soda while they were eating soup dumplings. Mikey liked Coca-Cola as much as Disneyland. That day was the day I didn't have my camera with me. I was using a Pentax that year, but the winter was so cold that the winder and built-in light meter broke. I was partially mute and my communication was awkward. But these guys from California were open minded like no one else, and that day we had a conversation, and at least I listened to them, and that's where the friendships that continue to this day developed. I asked them, "Can we go back to California together?"
 
For the next four years that summer, I traveled, couchsurfed, and found family in Pan's lost boys, the end of my youth and my coming of age. I was struggling with going. When the sun shines every day, days, seasons, and years merge, creating time lags that make it difficult to tell the truth. But time and nostalgia took over a dozen years to compose this story. Now my children are the same age as the characters in this book and I live permanently in Los Angeles. My work is always about other people, their lives and their experiences, but I don't consider myself a documentary filmmaker. A camera is a tool and a means. Now anyone with a smartphone and a social feed can do it.
 
Looking back, I think I was in the last generation of my teens at the time, and although I didn't photograph everything I did, I was at the forefront of communication through technology. No one had a cell phone, but everyone was talking on Myspace. 2005 was a very naive time...
Nick Haymes
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Intimate photographs are interwoven with a series of digital screenshots that Haymes identifies as essential to this moment, providing the viewer with a secondary narrative. Social media is still young, and Haymes has become keenly aware of these new nexus of communication among friend groups. Platforms like MySpace, YouTube, and online message boards create a sense of community by enabling connection, but they also set new, impossible standards and expectations. The various communications of the characters are carefully collected, and each time you turn the page, you feel a sense of ominousness. Haymes places actual place names and URL addresses on the pages, allowing curious viewers to delve deeper into the book's subjective truths.
To create this work, the artist goes back to the photographs and stitches together for himself what happened to these people. Haymes challenges us to make this special moment relevant to the present day. L.P. Hartley famously said at the beginning of his adolescent epic, The Go-Between, that "the past is a foreign land, inhabited by people with different customs." The Last Survivor is the First Suspect illustrates this sentiment with striking clarity.
Publisher: Kodoji Press
Publication year: 2021
Number of pages pages: 480
Size size: 240x170mm
Format format: Softcover
Language language：English/English
attachment:
State condition: New
First edition