![\"wood](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/wood-panels.jpg\")
\n<\/a>Wood Panels, 2012, from Oakwood series\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
N: \u2026Lately now I\u2019ve been thinking about the gendered object and the way objects become charged and spaces become charged by things that happened in them. \u2026In art school you\u2019ll have someone who will bring in photos of objects that are sentimental to them, and that\u2019s always the hard part is staying away from being overly sentimental. The objects I\u2019ve always photographed have had to have some kind of charge or subliminal meaning to me.<\/p>\n
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And then in the spaces going back to specifically Oakwood <\/i>and Sanctum, <\/i>[the latter] happened after the passing of my grandfather. I originally, when he was dying, I thought that was going to be who I photographed. But\u2026 to photograph someone who is on the brink of dying is a really charged moment and some people are into that but I feel I\u2019m a little too nuanced for that, I feel like it would have been too direct. I don\u2019t know if it would have even worked in retrospect. But I started making those images [in Sanctum<\/i>] in retrospect as a response to how I identified with my grandmother who lived in this space. And it had more so to do with how I identified with her rather than the objects, and they serve as a commentary and reflection on her. One of the images called Mother and Child <\/i>was a reference to a piet\u00e0 and it had to do with grandmother as the nurturer of my grandfather who was dying. When you\u2019re life becomes based around this idea of caring for someone, and then all of a sudden its gone, and that\u2019s where those objects came in, they were more about an echo or evidence of her identity.<\/p>\n
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In Oakwood, <\/i>that whole body of work started originally as a documentation of this space that I\u2019d grown up in. It started as a generic photo school project because the house I grew up in was being sold and I wanted to photograph it. I originally started with 35[mm] my sophomore year, and then I went back. Thinking about the charge of spaces and how things feel, its interesting when you go back six months later after you\u2019ve photographed it and you get something completely different. Especially depending on your format. In particular the one really interesting thing about large format is that it sees more accurately than the human eye does so the things it picks up are more subtle. That whole body of work had to do with light and dark, so when it came to really nuanced things that you normally could pick up with your eye but wouldn\u2019t translate into an iPhone photograph, your large format camera will pick it up.<\/p>\n
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It was a way of addressing being closeted in a suburban environment. That\u2019s where I came to the conclusion at the end of that body of work that it was all a metaphor for unrequited love, in a way. I spoke about scars and metaphors for the people who occupy the space, and that body of work was the first complex work I did where it wasn\u2019t about one subject and one person in the way that Sanctum<\/i> was, which was very directly about my grandmother. When I started Oakwood, <\/i>it became much more open and it had to do with my mother and being alone in this huge six person house.<\/p>\n
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A: Speaking of hidden and revealed, I can\u2019t help but draw a comparison between your work and Francesca Woodman. Which, I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard before.<\/p>\n
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N: It\u2019s funny because I think about it all the time and I never get the reference, but I\u2019ve always identified with her. I guess everyone does at some point. Especially when I did the self-portraits, people immediately threw that reference out. But even the work that doesn\u2019t have figures in it, the atmosphere still has the reference to it. And in her work, there were images that were lit darkly, but even the ones that weren\u2019t and were very evenly lit, still had a weight to them and a darkness and that\u2019s something I\u2019m really interested, the weight of the space. And in printing larger, it allows you to be enveloped in this space versus looking at a smaller print where you feel like you\u2019re outside of it. I love really playing with the psychology of spaces and how that affects people looking at them.<\/p>\n
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A: Yeah, she also deals with absence and memory, but I feel that her work is more interested in the human body and the interior that reflects that, while your work is more concerned with how the interior reflects the human body. What do you feel is the relationship between body and space in your work?<\/p>\n
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N: \u2026My interiors have more to do with cultural reference and looking to the past. I\u2019m always looking at spaces that are more antiquated or have been worn down. It\u2019s very rare I\u2019ll shoot a brand new building or an apartment\u2026 That was something that was spoken a lot about with Oakwood <\/i>and Sanctum, <\/i>was how they became metaphors for mental space more than they were physical spaces. Like you couldn\u2019t tie them to a specific time or location. Especially because of my interest in objects and how certain objects trigger ideas and memories for people, and that\u2019s always been something I\u2019ve loved about photography in general, or art in general.<\/p>\n
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My work, for me, is in some sense pointed back at me because it all comes from a personal place. I don\u2019t ever really start a body of work saying, oh I\u2019m interested in, for example, statues in Brooklyn. I don\u2019t have any personal relationship to them so I don\u2019t necessarily have an interest in photographing them. Whereas everything I\u2019ve photographed thus far has had some sort of introspective relationship to me and I think that\u2019s really important. And at the end of the day whether the person looking at the photograph gets exactly what I see, or they have a different reaction to it, is fine with me. As long as they walk away with something and are changed by it. The one thing with my work is I would never want someone to walk into a gallery and be bored by it\u2026<\/p>\n
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A: Your color palate is very somber and melancholy. Your Landscape <\/i>series almost reminds me of Romantic paintings, being in awe of and also saddened or terrified of nature. There\u2019s something melodramatic and romantic about all your work, does that speak to you at all, are you consciously using melodrama and melancholy?<\/p>\n
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N: It\u2019s not something I intentionally do, I think I\u2019m just naturally drawn to [that sort of thing]. Even films like Douglas Sirk films, the melodramas of the 50\u2019s about the American family. You\u2019ve probably seen Far From Heaven, <\/i>which is a remake of his film All That Heaven Allows. <\/i>Formally and technically a lot of those references have informed my work. But also, I grew up in a suburban area and my mom\u2019s side is Italian and they always had tchotchkes around so I always had [sentimental] things, I\u2019m kind of a hoarder. My older sister when I was in kindergarten gave me a carnation for Valentine\u2019s Day\u2026 I still have that. It\u2019s sentimental to me. And I\u2019m just sort of obsessed with the role memory plays in society. Some people feel that\u2019s an overworked topic and I disagree. I think people assume that it\u2019s not multifaceted.<\/p>\n
A: Never listen to people who say you can\u2019t make work because its been done before.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n N: Maybe people think anyone who is making work about memory and the past is just really nostalgic and needs to move forward and make something new\u2026But I don\u2019t make projects based on what will be \u201ccool.\u201d Or what will entertain an audience.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Naturally it happens [melodrama] when you use anything dark. I think something that has always interested me has been work about dark subject matter but hasn\u2019t been physically dark. Like work from Sophie Calle, that has this strange nostalgic sense to it, especially the work where she was following strangers in the streets as if they were lovers. That was fascinating to me the psychological aspect of it. I was originally going to be a Psych Major before I went to art school.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A: So its very much about drawing out the psychology of the subject matter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n N: Yeah, it\u2019s not about what the photograph is of but what it\u2019s about.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A: That makes sense, you\u2019re more interested in content.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n N: It\u2019s much more about the underlying layers and subtlety. I don\u2019t really like to make photographs where you look at them and you go, oh ok this is a descriptive photograph of a\u2026Ginger Ale can in a Brooklyn apartment and I can tell the demographic that probably lives here, especially based on the date and year and the format its made in, those type of things are less interesting to me. I try to keep my work as loosely descriptive as possibly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A: Timeless, would you say?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n N: Yeah \u2026and I feel in some sense that I was born in the wrong time period, maybe that\u2019s what it is. \u2026I\u2019ll never include something that you can [pin to] this modern day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A: I find that\u2019s really the case with people who still shoot with film. That makes a lot of sense, because it is <\/i>timeless. There is something that definitely places a digital photograph within a time and place.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n N: Even the fact that it\u2019s embedded in the file. It\u2019s good for archiving. But there\u2019s nothing more satisfying than going back through negatives you took a year ago and you find something [new]. Like six months ago this wasn\u2019t interesting to me, but now it has a different context. I\u2019m a firm believer in what you did will identify what you\u2019re going to do, or at least help you get there<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2026I really believe in that idea of unrequited love has a lot to do with it and the work isn\u2019t necessarily about my own relationships or identifying those people, I\u2019m not interested in that Nan Goldin descriptiveness of, oh this is my boyfriend during this year, etc. Sanctum <\/i>was about my grandmother in her space, but it was also about my identification with her place at that time in her life. And Oakwood <\/i>was the same, it was this beckon call for a relationship that didn\u2019t exist in this suburbia and I was closeted so it had a lot to do with my own personal relationships up to that point. And now, the body of work I\u2019m working on now, with the trans men, has been strange, but I don\u2019t want to make that sound derogatory. It\u2019s been a journey because I really had no idea where I was going after Oakwood. <\/i>I wanted to portraiture, but I had no idea what I was going to do. And being a gay photographer, or- a gay man that\u2019s a photographer is how I actually want to phrase it, because being a gay photographer makes it sound like I\u2019m putting a dick on a wall all the time. For some people that works.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [As for how I started photographing trans men:] I had two friends who lived in Arkansas, one of which I now know in person and lives in New York, the other I still have not ever met. At the time, [I was using] Myspace, and those other platforms that people used to communicate with strangers when the internet blew up, [and] I had this crush on this kid I was friends with and he-I still don\u2019t know how he identifies because he\u2019s always dating women and getting engaged to them every six months- he\u2019s always had drug issues, and so he\u2019s always been in and out of my life. \u2026And how this whole body of work started was that, years passed, and it was never a serious thing, and I was always attracted to this kid and I thought one day I was going to meet him because I\u2019d met his friend. And you figure you have this tie and you\u2019ll come here and I\u2019ll meet you, but we still haven\u2019t and we still communicate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One day, we got back in touch after he went on one of his post-drug rehab stints. After all this time, [he] explosively came out as a trans. Not that he was going to start transitioning, he came out as in: Here\u2019s a photograph of me holding my breasts, without a shirt on, not hiding anything.<\/i> And me, as a gay man, [I] was really interested in this dynamic of my attraction to him before knowing this. And it made me question my perception of \u2026male identity in general, and ideas of maleness and masculinity, which are problematic issues to begin with. But I was kind of shell-shocked. It had nothing to do with repulsion or disgust or that my attraction had changed, it was just that I was never aware of it beforehand it, and it made me question whether or not it mattered. That\u2019s how I found my first subject. I was like, well, if I want to start shooting portraits, I didn\u2019t want to photograph men I was sleeping with because it made reference to Jack Pierson. I wanted to avoid that sentimental I\u2019m-a-gay-man-photographing-naked-men vibe that can happen so easily. I was also really disinterested in the sexual aspect of it. I think there is something about sexuality in my work even though my work isn\u2019t inherently sexual. So I was looking for someone to photograph, and now I had an idea, so I posted an ad on Craigslist and that\u2019s how I found my first subject, Stephen. It was a weirdly intimate experience for strangers because, unlike now, where I meet everyone beforehand and get coffee with them and explain everything\u2026we met up and I photographed him and he didn\u2019t have his binder with him so I ended up binding him with scotch tape.<\/p>\n
\n<\/a>Bust, 2012, from Sanctum series<\/em><\/p>\n