His photo-reports, a series of photographs taken while staying in different cities, were created through a process of distortion of meaning, by visual analogy, puns or semantic collusions. At first glance, these latter may appear like simple photo-reportage revealing fragments of reality. Although often taken as frontal views, these photographs were however not objective. Hains used to start from encounters, events, texts, words or names to then build complex situations in which each component enabled the apparition of a large fragmentation of the meaning. Hains often staged key figures who had met along a street, sentences or even within play on words.