Everything I make is a love story.

Next to the Phillies’ dugout, I spotted the luminous photographer Roy DeCarava. Mr. DeCarava was on assignment for Sports Illustrated (work he hated). He did not take a single picture during the several innings we sat with him. I can’t recall if my father recorded anything with his Uher. He was a freelance stringer for NPR at the time. They talked the game away. Photo by Mike Hazard

The World’s Worst Documentary Filmmaker

I’m making a short video portrait of my father, Patrick D. Hazard (1927-2015).

We have about 20 hours of recordings with lively scenes in Weimar, where he sang lullabies he heard his mother sing, jollied his wonderful wife Hilly, and showed us the beauties of the Bauhaus; in Philly, hanging out in his beloved house designed by Louis Kahn; in Berlin, where he haphazardly filmed neon nightlife; in Saint Paul, where we looked at my late mentor Jerry Rudquist’s paintings in a retrospective at Macalester and breakfasted at Mickey’s Diner where he accused me of being his pappaRATzi; clips from the only documentary he finished, Moses' Land of Promises, his essay film about Robert Moses and the New York World's Fair; home movies he shot 70 years ago; and more.

Wrapped inside, a film within the film, will be a scene in Louis Sullivan's bank in Owatonna where I filmed him enthusing about our hero.

The movie is tentatively titled The World’s Worst Documentary Filmmaker, which is how he described himself. I liked to tease him that he was a contender.

The video will touch on his teaching, writing, filmmaking and global visions. It will be a video poem. It's coming soon!

The Farmers Are My Family

I’m jazzed to report I have been commissioned once more with feeling to photograph the farmers at the Hmong American Farmers Association Farm for two more years.

“Your photography is our brand,” said co-founder Pakou Hang.

Camera work started in 2015. For three years I documented the creation of the farm. The library of pictures developed into a full blown solo exhibition mounted by the Minnesota Museum of American Art (The M) that traveled the state.

I was not sure I wanted to commit to the project again so I stopped by the farm to feel it out last summer. It was one hundred degrees and humid. Groaning when I got out of the car, I chanced upon Mai-ye and her harvest of garlic drying. She smiled. We clicked. I was all in.

My new mission is to document the new farmers (especially the younger ones), the new crops and farming practices (especially those cultivated to address climate change), and the new infrastructure (like a Monarch electric tractor that maps the field).

Pakou invited the commission suggesting it might be healing for me to walk the fields and see my old friends. It has been.

When I Zoomed with Pakou and her brother Janssen Hang to talk, we three laughed and cried.

I am embraced as a brother.

The farmers are my family.

*“All winter I dream about going to the garden,” Judy said while harvesting radishes. “When I work in the garden, I am healthy.”* To see more work from the farm project, **click**. *Camera work by Mike Hazard*

***This picture and poem are from a photo book in play titled Solar Power & Moonshine.*** *Camera work and poem by Mike Hazard*

Looking for Light

Wiigwas means birchbark in Ojibwe. Jim Northrup is seen harvesting wiigwas to make a basket to winnow wild rice. He held the bark to the sun to see if there were any holes.

The picture is from a project called Solar Power & Moonshine. It’s a paper movie about looking for light and feeling darkness. It is a montage of images and texts. Here's a poem about Jim that complements.

Walking Point
These Vietnam vets reunite every year
on Veterans Day like grim pilgrims.
The ritual is righteous: Meet at Blackies
to eat a blackened steak. Jim, Fuzzy,
Raymond, and Vernon toast survival,
then march to the Wall in the dark.
Smoke pot, talk, drink beer and whiskey.
Fight off crisp flashbacks of human skin
on fire, the odor of singed hair.
Then get really stoned, until you black
out and fall down, immortally wounded.
Get up like a mortal Marine. Notice
your ghost patrolling in the Wall’s mirror.
Run and grab a cab to Arlington Cemetery.
Find a new grave in the black earth.
Wonder why you're still walking point
in this total eclipse of war and peace.
Lay yourself out in a black hole,
the latest in the line of white stones.
Look up through the veins of a tree;
hear the taps of the bugler.
Close your eyes and sense
the blackness inside a body bag.
Open your eyes. Smell the fall air.
Payback is a motherfucker, forever.
So walk, walk past the Wall; the farther
you walk, the farther it is to your grave.

The Painted Eye

The Painted Eye is a video portrait by Mike Hazard of the artist Jerry Rudquist painting a self-portrait. Kathleen Laughlin edited. The music is "The Room Of Remembrance, Part III" by Terry Riley.

Read the eulogy I gave at Rudquist’s funeral.

Click to watch a chronological edit of the painting. It’s a video for painters.

To watch more of my videos, click.

***Applause for Mike Hazard in a photo by Mike Hazard***

Seven Mysteries

I'm grateful that Paul Mattes invited me to read poetry at the Midstream Reading Series. I read seven poems which contain mysteries, strangenesses, and things I cannot explain. Seven small wonders of the world. Seven mysteries for Midstream. Here's one.

AFTER RAIN
The worms worked
all night, writing long lines
of crazy, untranslatable
poetry in the street.
Inebriates of spring,
they dry out in the sun.

During the reading, I marveled at my smart phone which I'd used to invite people to come, who did. Technology can make things happen. With the same device I then encouraged applause, which was given for a picture. Click. Friends might enjoy the video.