Known for his punchy photographs of New York City’s residents, Daniel Arnold shot to fame during the early days of Instagram. Since quitting his job on a whim one April Fool’s Day (so he could pass it off as a joke if the photography career didn’t go to plan), he’s since become a household name. His forthcoming monograph You Are What You Do, released by Independent publisher Loose Joints and edited by its co-founder Sarah Chaplin Espenon, reveals a softer, more complex and romantic side to the gritty city his lens has made so familiar. A few weeks before the book’s publication, we caught up with Arnold to discuss why New York draws him in, how to function as a witness to your own work and what makes a photo great.

Rosie Lowit: Could you tell me about your upcoming monograph, You Are What You Do? This is archival, right, in the sense that it isn’t a new body of photographs? How did you choose which images to include and is there a common thread that runs throughout?
Daniel Arnold: It’s a mix of seen and unseen. I haven’t really been one to work in terms of distinct bodies, it’s all within the same generous sprawl. We came at this brute-force style with a short lead time; Sarah of Loose Joints is a very decisive, confident editor and we spent a few days together in New York laying stuff out. Sarah had a particular idea of this punchline, sarcastic, flashy thing that I did at a certain period of time and was surprised to find that there was much more of a reflective, sombre, thoughtful angle – a romantic angle, even, that really overwhelms that pop stuff I did a long time ago. I think in a defiant way she pushed aside the usual work that people think of when they think of me and tried to show this other side.

RL: It’s really interesting that the book goes against the way you tend to be perceived and instead focuses on almost opposing themes. Is it your subject matter that has shifted?
DA: No matter what has happened to you in the past five or six years, it has been an astonishingly consequential period. My version of it happens to include a lot of close family dying very abruptly. The tone of my life has dramatically shifted, but along with it, I’ve had this really lucky, juicy, rising action with work. And that is the baseline of what I wanted to explore. My opportunities have become more exclusive, but my state of mind has become more grief-oriented. I think the usual association with increased opportunity is an increased preciousness, a raising of stakes, a honing of technique, trying harder to keep something. If I have any intention, it has been to stay naive and to keep my eye on some kind of purity, but life has really conspired with me on that motive. In a way, I function just as much as anybody as a witness, as an audience. I go out, ideally in kind of a fugue zone, and return at night – I’m just fascinated to see what comes back.

“If I have any intention, it has been to stay naive and to keep my eye on some kind of purity.”

RL: This suggests a real detachment from your role as the photographer. Are you very specific with your shots, or do you take photos of everything and wait to see what you come away with? How do you know when a scene is meant to be captured?
DA: I’ve always been a fairly conservative pusher of the button. I’m shooting on film, so I’m not blowing through thousands of pictures a day. At this point, I struggle to shoot a roll in a day, which is a problem because I’m such an addict. I really want something new to look at every night, and I have to deal with that not happening so much anymore. But there also isn’t a mission I’ve set out on. There’s not a picture that I’m looking for, ever. It’s really just a matter of making myself available and paying attention. And if I have my mindset on one thing, 70 other things blow by that I’m going to miss. It’s just a matter of paying attention to my experience, whether it be walking down the street, or doing some big scary fashion shoot. It’s all the same sort of set of tools and priorities, and ideally the same language of results.

RL: Could you expand on this idea that your editorial and commercial work yield the ‘same language of results’ as your street photography?
DA: Who knows how different things hit different people, but in my experience of that wide range of opportunities and different rooms, it doesn’t really change. There are different circumstances, expectations and paces, but, you know, I didn’t mean to become a photographer. I don’t have a distinct toolbox to go to. Everything I’ve learned has been by survival and by desire. I say all the time, I really only know how to do what I do. Odd as this always feels coming out of my mouth, and maybe even pretentious, I don’t think what I do has that much to do with photography. That’s the tool and the medium, but my sort of survival or improvised documentation of whatever is thrown at me is much more emotional than it is technical or photographic. That’s changed over the years because I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours on this. And, obviously, technique does naturally evolve. But because that happens secondarily, to me, all the work belongs on the same pile, ideally, or I’m not doing it right. That’s been the really undiminished pleasure of my job: everything ends up being an unconscious documentation of my emotional world at that moment. This was part of my conversation from the beginning of developing the book.

RL:
What is it about New York that draws you in? What makes it such a good setting for your photographs?
DA: The number one thing about New York is that it’s right outside my door. No matter where you put me, this is what I do. But I don’t know if I would find the curiosity to spend as much time looking if I didn’t live in a place that wasn’t so dynamic, energetic and ridiculous. I think for some people, the continuously devastating thing is that New York is so restless; the backdrops of your memories are almost instantly erased; everything changes so fast and so frequently. For the first five or six years that I was here, I was obsessed with death. Things turn over so fast. It’s all built on the bones and ashes of the thing that came before, which means you’re just so confronted with impermanence. On one hand, though, I think that really emboldens and energises the instinct to document. You have proof of something important quickly because things are gone so fast.

“I go out, ideally in kind of a fugue zone, and return at night – I’m just fascinated to see what comes back.”

RL: Has it made you more observant, more tuned into your surroundings?
DA: I don’t know that I’m as tuned in as you’d expect. As I mentioned a bit earlier, there’s this sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde duality between the photographer and the editor, who are both me but very different parts and uses of my brain. I feel like the broader changes are much more apparent to the editor brain than the photographer brain.
I don’t go out there thinking, “Oh, this has changed,” or like, “Oh, I love this restaurant, and I know it’s not going to last, I better get proof before it’s gone.” I think being a photographer of your daily life is this act of elevating minutiae. Of deciding that, otherwise, totally lost things fly by and nobody notices or cares about them. You put each thing on a little pedestal, making a museum of your wandering mind. And when that works and connects and becomes a source of income, a source of survival, you don’t really need anything else because it turns every waking minute of your life into this game that you must play.

RL: What makes a photo great?
DA: I would say, as a boilerplate answer that I stand by, that a good photo raises a question. I’ve devoted so much time and energy to this little game, and there is now an incredibly high premium on surprising myself. I feel the most satisfied and the most curious when I put myself in an uncomfortable position, uncomfortable enough that I work automatically and don’t remember what happened in the room until I get the pictures back and there’s something that I couldn’t have done on purpose. For me, that’s the main zone for success.

You Are What You Doby Daniel Arnold is published by Loose Joints, purchase it here.