It has been said that Ernest Hemingway wrote a story that he thought perfect. It read: "For Sale: baby shoes, never used." With those six words, Hemingway reminds the reader of the power of exclusion and implication. Similarly, Jefferson Hayman's recent series of sparse visual narratives remind the observer that matter and life is often not shaped with what is present, but rather, what is not.

In each photograph, Hayman's use of space, contrast and muted tones, gives the worn and seemingly "common" objects of everyday life a faded elegance, as if they are shaped more by circumstance and surrounding space than by their actual material. But through Hayman's lens, the common becomes uncommon, the mundane the extraordinary as the complex architecture of household items or a natural setting becomes apparent, so much in fact, that it appears otherworldly. A bottle, an apple, an unsealed envelope, a skull: these are the stuff of our pantries, writing desks, and lives, yet they are not. The viewer feels as if these objects belong to someone else, that he or she is intruding upon the private moments of another. Even two eggs paired together on a table seem an intimate encounter on which the viewer invades.

It is Hayman's careful placement of these items, in reference to one another, that creates a beautiful and unsettling narrative. And yet these photographs are not the story, but mere chapter headings. Hayman's work is a stunning reminder that life is what happens in between moments. Through his work, we become voyeurs of what is, and are forced to contemplate what could be, or what never was.