Premonitions: A Foreword on HAASTYLE Photography
by Nate Winter

From books to the web to television and even everyday conversation, storytelling is a device of immeasurable cultural value. Regardless of medium, a well-told story has the potential to entertain, influence, and even transcend into the greater cultural consciousness. To properly engage an audience, modern storytelling relies on an
established structure that advances its narrative from beginning to end. Introduction leads to rising action and then climax, which transitions into falling action and the
denouement conclusion.

While the dramatic climax in a story often attracts the most attention, the importance of a story’s introduction and rising action must not be underestimated. These stages in the storytelling process intrigue the audience, drawing them into the characters and the circumstances to see what happens next. Parallel to this narrative progression, these HAASTYLE photography collections focus on the introduction and rising action stages of storytelling. They introduce a world elusively different from our own and urge us to explore it.

These photography collections focus on spaces, setting a stage that waits to be played upon. And, while we see no action on that stage, our anticipation of it draws us closer. A departure from the claustrophobic, object-driven activity of the digital prints, Nick Haas’ photographs remain vacant, distant, and lifeless. This photography offers a premonition of the chaos seen in Haas’ digital prints, forming a bridge between the everyday reality we know and the surreality of the prints. A disquieting calm before the impending storm.

Because these photographs act as introduction and rising action leading to the climax of Haas’ digital prints, narrative gaps abound and myriad questions hang unacknowledged.

In between strobe-like glimpses of dramatic narrative, Nick Haas’ photography challenges us to look for answers within the minutia of his images as well as within the
depths of ourselves. Because a captured imagination is more vivid, immersive, and enduring than any mere photograph.