Daniel Arnold’s new photo book captures NYC ‘uninterrupted’

Daniel Arnold gravitates towards the anomalies, but wants to remain unnoticed. The American photographer is a maestro, not just spotting but embracing a moment of uncanny, clever harmony, framing a city street or a celebrity event into a characterful tableau. In the wake of his hit publication Pickpocket (published by Elara Press in 2022), his latest ensemble of work is the landscape-format monograph, You Are What You Do (published by Loose Joints). In it, he spotlights what he calls “the pleasure of drudgery” – pacing around New York in constant search of something that catches his eye, while equally being blessed by what he deems “the Alibaba factor” – those moments of great fortune that surpass any manifesting whatsoever.

The book’s cover recalls the all-seeing eyes of the faded billboard in The Great Gatsby, depicting a pair of bespectacled eyes that passively preside over the human dramas that unfold. Inside, we encounter affectionate moments on subway cars, someone giving the finger to a helicopter from a balcony, a nomadic newspaper in the wind, a boy planking on the beach by the boardwalk, glittering boots on the go at night, Grace Coddington with her full face in a bouquet, and many, many moments around the intimacy of sharing a cigarette (including the late actor and Euphoria star Angus Cloud).

Arnold is staunchly all about process over result, or as he puts it: “I function as an addict, and what I’m addicted to is making more pictures.” Funny and self-deprecating, he chatted to Dazed via Zoom from his New York apartment, located adjacent to an above-ground subway. We discussed his ambivalence about photography exhibitions, outmanoeuvring his Midwestern sheepishness, and why he’ll never be lukewarm about New York City.

Let’s start with the cover. How did that come to be representative of this particular body of work?

Daniel Arnold: The photo book has become so inflated and glorified and oversaturated, and I think with that comes a lot of artificially imposed gravity and seriousness. And although there is gravity in my trudge through the world, a lot of it is flippant and very casual and kind of fun. I have probably ten different versions of that picture from different days, because there are things I snag on; things you can revisit and let the world do its chaos around you and see how it changes. I have such a disordered relationship with intention because of the nature of how I work. Coming up with some clever bow to put on the book was very uncomfortable for me. The title, You Are What You Do, is taken from one of the pictures. I think it communicates this transcendent tone, this bottom line. 

I like the expression you just used, that you “snag on” things. Just by their sheer repetition as subjects, smoking, kissing, and children’s play are things that you seemed to “snag on”. Could you expand on these visual fixations? 

Daniel Arnold: As much as you would expect me to have the inside track on that, I know what I “snag on” by looking at my pictures [afterwards]. Some things are just like snap storytelling, just very useful plot devices. Any kind of demonstration of internal dynamics is a shortcut. If you get that, maybe there’s something else that you didn’t even pick up on at first. It’s like this prayer, this fingers crossed: I know something is happening here… What if there’s something in whatever I can capture without interrupting, which could lead to another story? It’s easy to have those automatic triggers. But I have such a gleeful spirit of ‘fuck you’ built into me that the ‘fuck you’ even applies to me – I’m going to go way against my own expectations of myself.

How do you outsmart your own expectations of yourself?!

Daniel Arnold: I think mostly by accident. A lot of it happens at home. Outside work contributes to the public story of me. Then there’s the camera in intimate places in my life, be it Milwaukee with my siblings, who have had my camera pointed at them for 20 years and it’s totally invisible, or in the apartment with my girlfriend, where we’re so unguarded and so silly and so vulgar. That ends up being more of this evolutionary space where things get cooked in a different way.

I’m curious about your methodology of quite literally shooting from the hip. When did you decide to adopt that stance and why did it stick?

Daniel Arnold: I think that is one personality’s response to the problem of taking pictures in public. There are exceptions, but generally, a picture of somebody having their picture taken is not as interesting as the world uninterrupted. It started not as a choice, but just an adaptation to the fact that I wanted to catch things as they were. I also have this ever-blossoming Midwestern thing where the idea of imposing is so uncomfortable for me, l can be paralysed by it, so it’s a workaround for that. I don’t want to be a pain, and I also want to catch things as they are. It’s more about just taking my quick stab, the possibility of a surprise, and then moving on to the next thing.

Generally, a picture of somebody having their picture taken is not as interesting as the world uninterrupted – Daniel Arnold

Whatever perspective you’re bringing, celebrities have their own cultural legibility. When photographing famous people, how does their public status complicate things?

Daniel Arnold: I am not immune to the pressure of celebrity. When I have that kind of access, it telegraphs this sort of emergency level of opportunity, which really messes with my whole ecosystem. I don’t want to think that way; I want to be passive and observant, and that’s hard for me in the presence of big star power. But also, it really boils down to a great universal storytelling opportunity, where – just by having some known entity in the picture – it changes the gravity. Little things become more meaningful, more powerful: context gets really caffeinated and turned up. There’s a challenge to it.

[I have] endless sympathy for the celebrity, whether they meant to get there or not. People are constantly trying to take something from them, or to cast them in a certain light or impose their own angle. They’re very, very guarded and protective of their true secret world – as they should be. So a romance can be necessary, especially one-on-one, to make them forget what they’re doing. It’s all just an exaggeration of the same language as everything else that I do; it’s just a really juicy player to put on the stage.

You've been photographing in New York City for a long time. There’s so much lamenting about how it’s watered down and overpriced, a husk of itself, yet it’s still an urban nexus and gravitational centre for many millions of people. Being in the streets all the time, you’re in the thick of it. I’d love your opinion on how to situate it.

Daniel Arnold: I feel like this is a city where everything is true. Yes, it’s a husk of itself. Yes, it’s an urban nexus. Everybody’s here. No matter when you show up, it is always regarded as a husk of itself. That was true 23 years ago when I got here, and it’s still true now. I don’t think that it matters at all. We are in a particularly unattractive cultural moment in a lot of ways and I do think that a New York without cell phones would be much more engaged. But it is just as sick as it’s ever been. People come to New York for a fantasy, and they really do invent the world.

I feel like this is a city where everything is true. Yes, it’s a husk of itself... No matter when you show up, it is always regarded as a husk of itself. That was true 23 years ago when I got here, and it’s still true now.... But it is just as sick as it’s ever been. People come to New York for a fantasy, and they really do invent the world – Daniel Arnold

Somehow, life also feels very real here because we’re stacked on top of each other, and there’s not enough room, and everything is way too expensive, and very few people are tolerable at the end of the day. Despite the fact that everyone’s living a dream, good or bad, there’s a forced pragmatism. You see every kind of person every day. You engage with every level of comfort and interest. I have moments of unbearable frustration – but I’m not bored. I’m not over it. I am in a healthy relationship – healthy in that it’s alive. It always feels like we’re building to some terrible crescendo, and who knows what it’s going to be.

The constant is the change. You look away from whatever block for six months, and you come back and everything’s different. The backdrops of all your memories are gone. It’s a very juicy world for a photographer, because I’ve got the proof. [New York] demands obsession. But if I have the time and the energy, there’s nothing I prefer than slowly walking from Chinatown to Central Park and back. It’s the best way to spend the day.

In terms of engaging with visual culture, how do you refine your eye? Do you go to art or photo shows?

Daniel Arnold: I really want to like photography shows, but I feel it’s so anti-climactic, and maybe that’s the perspective of somebody who is so addicted to the process that the results are kind of taken or left. Like, nothing really lives up to making the work. In earlier days, when I had a more unstable identity in that world, I found consumption much more rewarding and useful, because I still felt I needed to compare myself to see where I fit in, and it was a thrill to find people who are really good.

I remember going to see Alex Soth’s Songbook show. I had dreams about it, and I think that was more a function of my perception of myself, but it’s great work too. I saw Wolfgang Tillmans’ MoMA show, and I really liked the experience, like I was walking around in his unconscious mind. That was inspiring to me. But my energy right now is best spent working. I still feel like I’m at the start of things. I still feel like I’m new. I still feel like a beginner. Working cultivates that feeling; you still have that thrill. 

I was looking at the acknowledgements in the back of the book. I love that you cited Peter Hujar and Candy Darling. 

Daniel Arnold: That acknowledgement section is very practical. Peter Hujar gets a nod because there is that photo of my girlfriend in the hospital bed, where I was like, God, you look just like that picture of Candy Darling. There’s no abstract hat-tipping – those people are directly responsible in some way for the pictures in the book. There are people who gave me access to a certain room. There are people who are in the pictures. There’s my family.

I guess influence has always been a funny one to try to wade through. If anything, I feel like I’m more influenced by the way that people function in the world than by what they make. I don’t mean to deny influence; I obviously didn’t just appear out of nowhere, fully formed. I feel like most knowledge has been retroactive. I had a very rudimentary start: I had seen three of the most famous Winogrand photos, and a little Diane Arbus and Helen Levitt, maybe. That was as far as it went. It’s been wonderful to stumble into this place so ignorantly, because there’s so much to find.

You Are What You Do by Daniel Arnold is published by Loose Joints and is available here.