July 2025

Q: I’d like to start out with where you are now, in the summer of 2025. What are you up to?

A: Pretty much same as always: taking as many photos as I can, wherever I happen to be. Then

turning them into photobooks.

Q: In your recent work, I do see two distinct styles of books. Some, such as Absolutely 28

Goldfish or The Way She Smiles are focused in on one subject, in one specific way of shooting.

Others such as Guillotine or The Abyss Above/The Abyss Below seem to roam far further in terms

of what holds them together.

A: Exactly! Sometimes I get a specific idea and have that in mind as I’m out wandering the city

with my camera. For instance, you mention Absolutely 28 Goldfish. That came about because I

would sometimes eat lunch at this now, alas, former Hunan restaurant down on W. 14th St. They

had a huge goldfish tank with these beautiful fish, and I’d usually take a few photos of them.

This went on for a couple years, then I got the sudden notion to make a book with the

goldfish photos. I started shooting a lot more of them—

Q: Some in focus, some out, right?

A: Yes. I didn’t want a book of pretty photos of fish, but instead a book that played off color and

form; the literal stretching into abstraction, and back. Then when I had the book pretty much laid

out, I had the idea to add a signed Polaroid print to Deluxe copies of the book. That spurred me

to get my first Polaroid camera and head back to the restaurant.

Funny story. I shot a good number of Polaroids of the fish, but decided I needed more.

But the tank had disappeared. Guess what: It was in a sister restaurant in Flushing, Queens.

They’d given me the name, but it wasn’t the complete name, so I walked a mile from the subway

to the restaurant I thought the fish tank was in, no sign of it, Googled around and found anotherrestaurant with a very similar name, hiked another couple miles to that, and finally found the fish

tank. Shot a whole ’nother stack of Polaroids, and enjoyed a fine lunch at, interestingly, half the

price as the one in Manhattan.

Q: I heard you mention lunch before. You take your lunches seriously?

A: (A chuckle) That’s one of my secrets. Many days of the week I first decide where I’d like to

go for lunch, always in an interesting part of New York City, and then afterward I’m busy taking

pictures.

Q: So lunch determines—

A: Yeah, pretty much what I do. (Laughs.)

Q: That other focused book I mentioned, The Way She Smiles. How did that come about?

A: I was talking to one of my assistants, Lulu, who had contacts with models, about doing a book

focusing solely on a model. I was keen to experiment with that, and Lulu said she could hook me

up with a model who might be interested.

Q: And?

A: She’d been a former student of mine, studying fashion, and since I knew her, and felt

comfortable around her, I said, “Want to just try it with you modeling for me. See how it goes?”

Now these weren’t going to in any way be traditional model shots. I had this new way of

warping and blurring the image I wanted to try out. So Lulu and I headed out and I started

shooting her on the street and it looked good, she looked good, and she was into it, so we just

kept going.

Q: And the other kinds of books, the less focused?

A: You mentioned The Abyss Above/The Abyss Below. That came from a quote of Dostoevsky’s

I was struck by: “We possess broad natures…. We’re capable of combining all possible

contradictions and simultaneously contemplating both abysses at the same time, the abyss above,

that of lofty ideals, and the abyss below, that of the most vile and stinking degradation.”I’m always interested in both the heights and depths of humankind, and those lines

capture that well. So that became my mandate with that book: to sort in photos with the widest

range of experience and essence.

Q: The widest range?

A: I say this often. Why can’t a photobook be a work of literature? Big, aspirational, taking on

the world. Of imagery like a poem; of story and theme like a novel; of depth and wonder and

despair like … well, like Fyodor Dostoevsky. Push limits. Startle and surprise. Move us in deep

emotional ways. Reveal new truths. Aim high and—

Q: Be ambitious.

A: Yes, be ambitious. I mean, what’s the alternative?

SPACE

Q: You mentioned with The Way She Smiles ways of “warping and blurring the image.” I

understand that you have even more new ways to shoot your photos. Want to talk about that?

A: As you can surmise looking through my books, I’m most often taken with photos that aren’t

necessarily crisp and wholly in focus. I don’t have anything against a tight, sharp, realistic photo

taken on the street. Indeed, I recently took one of my most powerful straight-on street shots.

((DROP IN CONEY ISLAND PHOTO)) But in truth a lot of “well-made” or “correct” photos

bore me. I have this sneaky feeling that they’ve all been shot: Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand,

Diane Arbus, William Klein have used up every angle and approach out there. I mean, I take all

kinds of photos, and I do my best, but if there’s nothing immediately exciting about a shot I’ve

made, I usually delete it on the spot.

Q: You’re always shooting digitally?

A: My trusty Fuji X100. I'm up to the V model. Fixed lens, one setting. I don’t have to think

about it.

Q: But you’re not just shooting through the unadulterated lens, right?

A: I don’t know about adulteration or not, but, yes, I have a variety of ways I shoot that puts

some … well, something between the lens and the world. (Long pause.)Q: And? I mean, do you wish to elaborate?

A: Not really, no. (A shrug.) I want to keep some secrets.

Q: After giving away the centrality of lunch plans to your work?

A: (Laughs.) Exactly.

But I will say that a recent book of mine, Guillotine, is at bottom a collection of photos I

like to think nobody can quite figure out how I took them.

Q: That mystery is important.

A: Mystery is everything.

SPACE

Q: I understand you don’t want to give away too many of your special moves—

A: You mean, like how I brought Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk to photography?

Q: Sure, sure—if you insist. But I’m thinking of the title of your “How I became a photographer”

book, Mirrors and Smoke. For years now you’ve shot into and through anything you can.

A: Yep.

Q: Come on, that’s all in a book you wrote. Surely you can elaborate more.

A: Sure. I’ve come to a pretty simple understanding of what a photograph should be. A

photograph is like a box; square, rectangular, hardly matters. All that counts is what you put into

that box. Indeed, you can put anything into it.

Q: Wait. You’re using your Fuji, pushing the shutter button, it’s mechanically capturing a

moment….

A: Of course. No way around that. But what I’m doing is finding ways to make that moment not

simply a literal depiction of what’s in front of the lens, at the conventional distance and focus

and such. I like to think of what I’m shooting as what’s in front of my imagination.

Q: That seems—

A: No, no, listen. Again, anything can go into that box. Dream it, envision it, stumble upon it,

intuit it—doesn’t matter. Anything at all. It’s wide open.You see, most people think of photography as representational. A record of what’s there.

You see it, there it is, that’s a photo.

But I’m far more interested in what’s not there … or maybe a ghostly spray of what’s

there, the mist of what’s real mixed in with a fountain of vision and wit and—

Q: I think you’re losing me.

A: I know … I might be losing myself.

Let’s put it this way. I’ve always been interested in imaginative spaces. That liminal zone

between real and not quite. The emotional and poetic essence of what your camera can capture,

not simply what’s right there in front of it.

Q: It’s tricky. I think I get it, but it’s kind of hard to talk about. I don’t mean simply for us, but

for anyone. It seems—

A: Beyond words. But that’s the whole idea, isn’t it? It’s photography. We’re talking pictures.

And in photobooks, a concatenation of images, one after the other, leading to a unique

experience.

SPACE

Q: Let’s talk about photobooks for a moment. I understand you have quite a collection.

A: I like to think so. You ask my wife, I have way too many. I mean, there are some very

valuable photobooks in piles now on my office floor.

You know, what I’ve always loved about what I’m doing with photography is how

everything else I do, or have done, feeds into it. The novels I’ve written. The songs I wrote and

performed with my music group, Wild Mercury. What I’ve read.

That recent book I mentioned, Guillotine. I prepped for that specifically by rereading

Rimbaud’s Illuminations and playing the gospel blues of the Reverend Gary Davis. Especially

his Harlem Street Singer LP.

Q: Pretty varied sources.

A: That’s the point. I draw on everything. Literature, music, visual art, and certainly all the

photobooks I have. They’re all inspiring, each in their own way.SPACE

Q: Speaking of your photobook collection, I understand you went to Tokyo last year—

A: I did. Just hopped on an insanely long two-hop flight, through Canada, and landed in Tokyo.

Besides my love for Japan, my main purpose was to seek out and purchase rare photobooks.

You know, as a student many years ago I was under the spell of the half-broke American

writers traipsing around Europe after World War I, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, The

Sun Also Rises bohemians, all that stuff. I didn’t realize till later that it was possible for them

because, postwar, currencies fluctuated like crazy; these people just went where their dollars

could go furthest.

The Yen was way down last summer, and it was a great time to go truffling out

photobooks.

Q: Such as?

A: I got an original, Daido-signed Provoke 2. A first printing of Miyako Isiuchi’s Apartment. A

fine first edition of William Klein’s Life Is Good, & Good for You in New York. Another first

edition of Fukase’s Ravens, and another first of Daido’s Bye Bye Photography. I did go a little

crazy. And I have to mention the extraordinary assistance I got in all ways from my friend Shin

Kawamura, the owner/proprietor of Wols Books in Tokyo.

Oh, and I also made my own photobook from shots I made over there, Tokyo Is Cool.

Q: I like that one.

A: Thanks.

SPACE

Q: Can I ask what’s on the horizon?

A: You mean new projects? New books?

Q: Yes.

A: (Deep breath) Well, I’m always working on new books. I get a little crazy if I don’t have a

number of projects.

Q: Such as?A: I’m working on one now called The Good Life. It’s supposed to be summery, cheerful; we’ll

see how that goes. (Laughs.)

I have an ongoing project concerning New York City taxis. The old-school yellow ones. I

also have another book in mind called OG, though I’m not sure that will pan out. Let’s see,

there’s a self-portrait book out there. It should be called I and Eye, or Eye and I—you like one

title better?

Q: Maybe Eye and I.

A: Maybe.

There are more, but, you know, I always feel a little strange when people say, “You sure

make a lot of photobooks.” I know, I do. As I said, I need to keep busy. And … well, it’s so

much fun, hitting the streets and taking photos, then working on them and editing them moving

them in and out of books.

You have to realize, as a novelist I got up every day and had to face a blank screen and

fill it with characters and plots and life … lots of life … just from my own imagination. All the

while sitting at my desk, listening to classical music. So being out on the streets taking photos,

then shaping them into a book. That’s easy-peasy.

Q: So no thought of stopping.

A: No stopping.

Q: (A smile) Besides, you do have to eat lunch—

A: Indeed. Every damn day.