It’s a curious thing, what we do when no one’s making us do anything. Some of us race lawnmowers. Some of us knit sweaters for cats. Others, more dignified perhaps, slather mayonnaise onto ham sandwiches while seated in folding chairs at demolition derbies, hoping the carnage starts before the mayo turns.
Spare time—the hours left over after sleep and survival—has long been the province of philosophers, labor organizers, and social critics. But it’s also the great democratic canvas on which we scribble our desires, our fetishes, our tiny acts of rebellion.
Photographer and filmmaker Adam T. Deen has spent the last decade chronicling what Americans—and the occasional French vacationer—do with their so-called free time. The result is Spare Time, his first artist book, and a selection of images from it will be on display at the Germantown Library from May 30 through July 31. The opening, also serving as a book launch, kicks off Friday, May 30 from 6 to 8pm. There will be small talk, wine, and evidence of humanity’s inability to sit still.
Deen, whose credits include bylines in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Hyperallergic, has a gift for capturing the minor-key spectacle of ordinary life. His lens finds its way into racetracks, lakesides, carnivals, front yards, and fleeting glances between people who didn’t know they were being watched, but somehow seem to know. The images in Spare Time stretch from the Hudson Valley to the French Riviera, but the mood stays consistent: a gentle voyeurism laced with admiration for the odd rituals we invent to pass the time.
The book’s title nods to 19th-century utopian Robert Owen’s ideal division of the day: “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what you will.” In that final third, Deen sees not just frivolity or distraction, but character—a national portrait built from pie-eating contests, boat parades, and poolside reveries. It’s a quiet argument for the profound in the seemingly pointless.
The show at the Germantown Library—a civic temple to that other spare-time pastime, reading—will feature 10 photographs from Spare Time and include public programs (details TBD, but bets are on artist talks, not line dancing). Deen’s book was photo-edited by Jennifer Greim (ex-Vogue, ex-Annie Leibovitz staffer), and includes an essay by painter Caitlin MacBride.
Printed by Conveyor Studio, Spare Time is a softcover, 72-page meander through the world we make when we clock out. It retails for $18, which is less than the price of a movie ticket and a bag of popcorn, and likely a better use of your time.
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This article appears in May 2025.
