Arranging Tangerines Episode 43 - A Conversation with Kris Graves

Transcript

Speaker: Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, presented by Lydian Stater.

Speaker: Conversations with contemporary artists, curators, and thinkers about the intersection of art, technology, and commerce.

Speaker: Your hosts are me, Alessandro Silver and Joseph Wilcox.

Speaker: I know what to do.

Speaker: I know what to say.

Speaker: I just know I don't want to be like you.

Speaker: I know what to do.

Speaker: I don't know what to say.

Speaker: I just know I don't want to be like you.

Speaker: This week's guest is photographer Chris Graves.

Speaker: Chris Graves is an artist and publisher based in New York and California.

Speaker: Graves creates artwork that deals with societal problems that aims to use art as a means to inform people about cultural issues.

Speaker: Using a mix of conceptual and documentary practices, Graves photographs the subtleties of societal power and its impact on the built environment.

Speaker: He explores how capitalism and power have shaped countries and how they can be seen and experienced in everyday life.

Speaker: Graves also works to elevate the representation of people of color in the fine art canon and to create opportunities for conversation about race, representation, and urban life.

Speaker: He photographs to preserve memory.

Speaker: Welcome, Chris.

Speaker: You get used to it.

Speaker: You have done a lot of these.

Speaker: Not in person.

Speaker: No?

Speaker: Get up.

Speaker: I've done like one or two, but it's all good.

Speaker: Well, we'll be number three.

Speaker: Or four.

Speaker: And, you know, if it's terrible, we just won't publish it.

Speaker: As long as I don't say anything really bad.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I don't give a shit.

Speaker: I mean, I obviously don't give a shit.

Speaker: I can maneuver live words very well.

Speaker: Well, with that being said, thank you, Chris Graves, for agreeing to be on our podcast.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: Thank you for having me.

Speaker: um it's right down the street i mean like we walked here from our like where we both live um and it's 10 minutes away from here so it's great it's awesome seemed quick because you were like on duty till eight here by 8 15. it was real quick very convenient yeah yeah and on duty uh with a new baby with a baby child 11 months old that's still alive sleeps at night that's awesome how's the sleeping

Speaker: This guy sleeps.

Speaker: That's good.

Speaker: He sleep trains for like two nights, and then he sleeps through the night since then.

Speaker: Fantastic.

Speaker: It's kind of insane.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: We got pretty lucky as well.

Speaker: I have a niece.

Speaker: She's 15 months, and she's very... Not sleeping?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But I think the parents are also very... They're not... Trying.

Speaker: They don't know that they're... That's just bad parenting.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: They might be listening.

Speaker: I assume they're not.

Speaker: It takes patience, right?

Speaker: It's...

Speaker: Well, I'm still new at it, right?

Speaker: Like, I think I just started.

Speaker: So for me, it's like, I just want more time to figure it out.

Speaker: Meaning like I would like to do less things so I have more time in the day to kind of figure out more.

Speaker: So that's where I'm at, kind of.

Speaker: And that's a good attitude because it's like, every time my wife and I thought we figured it out, it would be some kind of horrendous thing that reminded us that we,

Speaker: Like I remember she was having a hard time sleeping.

Speaker: We were like, this is ridiculous.

Speaker: She's fidgeting.

Speaker: And we finally, I forget, after music or whatever, probably the noise machine from some kind of bunny or something, we finally went down.

Speaker: And we literally high-fived.

Speaker: And I look in the monitor.

Speaker: I'm like, what's that?

Speaker: And I open the door.

Speaker: She had vomited like 360.

Speaker: She was sick.

Speaker: So that's what she was trying to tell us.

Speaker: I see.

Speaker: It's a bad coincidence there.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No, we put him down for a night.

Speaker: Well, let him cry for like 25 minutes.

Speaker: I was going away to photograph at Disney World and my wife was like, if this kid's not like sleeping through the night by the time you go, it's going to be like, it's not going to be good.

Speaker: And I was like, let's do this sleep training.

Speaker: So we came back from Portland to try to sleep train a kid on a delay.

Speaker: Maybe that's the trick.

Speaker: fucking slept man.

Speaker: I mean a kid still sleeps.

Speaker: It's been like seven months since then.

Speaker: You're good until they regress.

Speaker: They do regress.

Speaker: How many wins?

Speaker: It's usually like two.

Speaker: Two-ish?

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: I mean okay.

Speaker: But it's fun at that point.

Speaker: That gives me good time.

Speaker: That's great too.

Speaker: There's a regression.

Speaker: I feel like that's how parents kind of mark their existence is like there's times when they're able to be a person and times when they're no longer.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I don't have any kids.

Speaker: Sorry.

Speaker: We have four people in this room.

Speaker: Three have been speaking.

Speaker: With me is my dear friend and amazing photographer, Frank Francis.

Speaker: Say hi, Frank.

Speaker: Hello.

Speaker: I just love you, Crash.

Speaker: Yeah, so yeah, we're both living in Long Island City right now.

Speaker: I don't know if that's public information, but I just put that in there.

Speaker: It is now.

Speaker: Yeah, I'll take it back.

Speaker: No vaccine.

Speaker: And he has a seven-year-old, which is good.

Speaker: This is also, you're just blowing up his spot.

Speaker: Oh, man.

Speaker: Social security number and bank account information.

Speaker: Only the last four digits.

Speaker: Oh, yeah, that's right.

Speaker: The last four, man.

Speaker: But Queens.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Grew up?

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Queens kid.

Speaker: I grew up on the east side by JFK, like a town named Laurelton, which is Rosedale, which is like a tribe called Quest.

Speaker: It's from there.

Speaker: The Fat Boys?

Speaker: Yeah, the Fat Boys.

Speaker: You remember the Fat Boys?

Speaker: Those three just, yeah, the Fat Boys.

Speaker: Anyway, they were rappers.

Speaker: They were kind of good.

Speaker: And they live a bright- I get the sense that they maybe weren't that good.

Speaker: They were good for that time period.

Speaker: Yeah, okay.

Speaker: They made a hit.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: They had a hit.

Speaker: Not many people had hits.

Speaker: Not many people get hits.

Speaker: That's true.

Speaker: They were known in the city.

Speaker: And I think that if you can just be known in the city, you're good.

Speaker: You don't need worldwide shit if you live in New York City, I don't think.

Speaker: I don't know if th is is controversial, but I think when hip-hop hit Queens is when it really matured.

Speaker: Like you had Nas, you had TypeCo Quest.

Speaker: Oh, my God.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Run DMCs for Queens as well, Hollis.

Speaker: Love Queens.

Speaker: Love Queens.

Speaker: Can't do that.

Speaker: South Bronx.

Speaker: South, South Bronx.

Speaker: South Bronx.

Speaker: So I work, full disclosure, I also work at Fotografiska.

Speaker: And we have a Hip Hop 50 exhibition right now, which you guys are more than welcome to come.

Speaker: I'm going to come to Fotografiska on Tuesday to meet with Sophie.

Speaker: Oh, perfect.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: So it's a funny week for that.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: Photographiesca, there it is.

Speaker: Yeah, please, go on with your Queens is better than the Bronx.

Speaker: I'm just saying you just see the pictures and you just see the development.

Speaker: Yeah, of course, the Bronx.

Speaker: It was so early.

Speaker: It was slightly different than music only when it was in the Bronx, I think.

Speaker: And that's the difference between when you got to Queens, it was more about putting things on track, production and making that happen to get out into the world.

Speaker: We had viewers at that point.

Speaker: But before that, you didn't.

Speaker: So they were on the streets.

Speaker: every night dancing and partying in the Bronx.

Speaker: And that is the fucking, the birth of hip hop.

Speaker: Like rapping is what Queens did.

Speaker: Well, the birth of hip hop happens in the Bronx.

Speaker: Of course.

Speaker: So it's different.

Speaker: Like it can be, it goes both ways.

Speaker: I guess I love, I mean, I love Queens rappers the most, of course you got it.

Speaker: You got to represent.

Speaker: I'm from Jackson Heights, so.

Speaker: Oh, okay.

Speaker: But yeah, you're correct.

Speaker: And not to make a correlation between NFTs and hip hop, but yeah, the early people that started with NFTs, you're kind of playing around with it and then you pick it up on the secondary and the third and start making things that might be a little bit more conducive to markets and

Speaker: Let me think about that.

Speaker: That's a lot right there.

Speaker: That's a big question.

Speaker: And it's not even a question, right?

Speaker: It's just like an observation.

Speaker: It's just like an observation.

Speaker: I feel like NFTs for me is, I think it's personal for everybody, though.

Speaker: I think it works different for everybody.

Speaker: Most people are not, like the people, like the artists are not thinking about what the collectors do.

Speaker: or, you know, care about, right?

Speaker: Like that's not, well, I shouldn't say that.

Speaker: I should say that like there's artists that do care a lot about selling artwork and there's artists that like, first off, want to make great work.

Speaker: And they're not usually the same artists.

Speaker: Sometimes they are.

Speaker: They can be, but they can be.

Speaker: I can, you know, if I want to sell something,

Speaker: I'll figure out a way to try to sell it.

Speaker: It's that 50-50 shot.

Speaker: What's bad?

Speaker: It's all just spending money and putting things on a blockchain.

Speaker: I'll spend $12 to see if I can sell something for $1,000 almost all the time.

Speaker: That's a much cheaper bet with a better turnout than most things.

Speaker: It still has to be worth it.

Speaker: It still has to be a piece that you want to

Speaker: that you want to put out into the world or it means something but the earlier career but the early folks right they weren't there was no market right the people in 2015 2016 whatever that like that like historic lineage of blockchain art but people bought it people did so there was a market i guess there was yeah

Speaker: I mean, it wasn't like a billion dollar.

Speaker: It was like it wasn't like people money.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Pennies on the dollar.

Speaker: But shit, man.

Speaker: Somebody sold.

Speaker: I mean, still like those things you sold.

Speaker: They sold millions of those penny things.

Speaker: People made a lot of fucking money.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I wonder if that's kind of where we're at again.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Yeah, but even the projects that did not sell, they're still, what do you call it?

Speaker: They're still wrapping the old whatever blockchain that might not be compatible with the current.

Speaker: Classic?

Speaker: And I think they call them blockchain archaeologists, and they're going back and saying, do you want to resell this thing that never worked out, never panned out?

Speaker: And they're like, yeah, sure.

Speaker: Well, yeah, because now it's like a part of history, right?

Speaker: Yeah, it's like a historical thing.

Speaker: oh that's like what what the that's awesome it is the fountain piece right by Duchamp like nobody cared about it for like 40 years right um and then people cared not not to say that like whatever it's amazing it's amazing Duchamp NFTs where we start this conversation what was this the beginning of the sentence was like just a whole nother atmosphere I love it it started with Queens

Speaker: uh but that's right that's the thing i think i i enjoyed most about shop baby that's what we're doing here exactly queen city shop um looking into your work i mean i think i so i i came across your work through nfts but then in looking at your prior work you've always you've been this amazing photographer thank you who utilized nfts um

Speaker: So it feels like whether or not NFTs were there, you're a photographer first and foremost.

Speaker: But then utilizing the medium to disperse and, I guess, acquire.

Speaker: For me, it was more like archive.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Because...

Speaker: there's web to didn't allow you to have an archive, right?

Speaker: Like if you don't pay for the subscription to your website, then it goes away and that doesn't exist.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So where can, where can artwork exist that can't be taken away?

Speaker: Like it just has to exist there.

Speaker: Like you can put it out there, sell, sale or not.

Speaker: It exists.

Speaker: And it's part of your name that goes back to maybe you, hopefully.

Speaker: I mean, we'll see if that is actually the truth at some point, but yeah, that's,

Speaker: That was it, like having an archive that was not my responsibility.

Speaker: I think that's kind of it.

Speaker: I like my work, and I've been trying really hard to show you only the best things that I've ever done.

Speaker: So I'm trying to put it out there, and then if you like it, awesome.

Speaker: I mean, I think 175 people bought Confederate monuments for me.

Speaker: That's awesome.

Speaker: I was like, great.

Speaker: That's like a black and white Confederate monument.

Speaker: You chose the one you wanted, and I sold it to you.

Speaker: That's a cool thing about the blockchain.

Speaker: That's just never happening in like a gallery ever.

Speaker: That is amazing.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And half the buyers are anonymous, right?

Speaker: So you don't really know who's getting them.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And it's great.

Speaker: And they're giving them to other people, which is awesome too.

Speaker: I mean, somebody bought like, can I buy 40 of them and just give them to my friends as Christmas presents?

Speaker: Oh, wow.

Speaker: I was like, of course.

Speaker: Of course you can.

Speaker: That's interesting though.

Speaker: I never thought about the archival nature of the blockchain in that way as different from websites and stuff like that because, you know, when everything shifted, because before, if you had wanted a website, you made it yourself, right?

Speaker: You like had, you figured out how to use Dreamweaver or like met somebody who did.

Speaker: Flash, baby.

Speaker: And now it's all Squarespace, right?

Speaker: And you have to pay every single year, every single month or else it's gone, right?

Speaker: Yeah, but you have to pay the FTP before also.

Speaker: Yeah, but at least it's still- Kind of yours, but then you don't pay the FTP and you don't have any.

Speaker: It's the same, man.

Speaker: It's different, but it's the same.

Speaker: I see what you're saying.

Speaker: You're spending the money and you still don't own it.

Speaker: I mean, somebody's got to pin your NFTs, right?

Speaker: And that could be a thing eventually.

Speaker: And you might have to end up pinning your own stuff if everything falls apart, which I don't think it will.

Speaker: I think things are getting- I think everything's going to get hacked within years.

Speaker: And you'll lose everything you used to have if you didn't save it properly or like put it on a wallet or something.

Speaker: Maybe.

Speaker: But that's the thing.

Speaker: Like you can't like, like somebody has to be doing it somewhere.

Speaker: There's no, there's no, like it can't run on its own.

Speaker: Even if it's like a dispersed network of IPFS and it's like all these like servers, it can't, it can't exist without somebody running it.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But you don't have to pay for it anymore, which is nice.

Speaker: And it might get big enough where it, things get built on top of it so much that there's no way it could go away.

Speaker: which I think is what a lot of people are hoping, right?

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: Yeah, I don't think it's going away.

Speaker: Yeah, I don't either.

Speaker: I think we're already past that point, and then everyone who doesn't believe it is now being flagrant with their money.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Or with their future.

Speaker: There's going to be more than the world that we live in, and nothing else is even close.

Speaker: So I think that people are just going to keep flocking towards it.

Speaker: as the years go on and they find a use case that matters.

Speaker: I mean, people don't buy photography.

Speaker: Most people on earth don't buy photography.

Speaker: So even to have sales is awesome.

Speaker: I mean, like it's great.

Speaker: So people buy what they want.

Speaker: You know, like they'll buy little trinkets, little stars that they can put on their digital clothing.

Speaker: Like they'll, you know, they'll do.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: What are the things that are in Crocs that people, what do they call it?

Speaker: They have a specific name, right?

Speaker: They do.

Speaker: And somebody said that name to me on an elevator.

Speaker: It's like, yo, check those like fucking pins out.

Speaker: Very cool.

Speaker: And then she was like, she named the thing.

Speaker: And I was like, all right.

Speaker: No, but that's a good point.

Speaker: It's our kids, the ones that are very used to digital assets.

Speaker: They're the ones that are kind of driving this.

Speaker: They will be driving this in the future as far as what is considered a thing.

Speaker: They'll spend more money at it.

Speaker: I mean, like if music goes to blockchain, then kids will spend the money.

Speaker: if real games come to it, kids will spend the money.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, I didn't get it until I started, like, I was getting all the free stuff on Discord from Tezos, right?

Speaker: And then, like, I started getting ones that were, like, three bucks or whatever.

Speaker: And I started, like, putting my own money into it.

Speaker: And I can't remember...

Speaker: who we were talking to about, oh, it was the last interview we did, but like when you spend money on something, you have a different relationship with it.

Speaker: And so I started seeing this webpage that had all these NFTs on and digital assets.

Speaker: And I was like, oh, these are mine.

Speaker: I was like, I bought some of these and I like these.

Speaker: And they felt like real things way more than they did beforehand.

Speaker: And it was just like, there was like a little bit of a paradigm shift that had to happen.

Speaker: Yeah, it's fucking addiction, dude.

Speaker: I mean, like, like, Tezos is a dick thing.

Speaker: I mean, because it's so accessible, right?

Speaker: Yeah, it's like, I have a bunch of shit.

Speaker: I mean, I bought so many NFTs, like $3, $2 and just moving gifts, man.

Speaker: All I want is the moving gifts.

Speaker: Yeah, I don't want still gifts, though.

Speaker: That's kind of I feel like that's gone too far.

Speaker: You can't just like sell me a gift.

Speaker: You can sell me like a moving image like that.

Speaker: And I'm like, damn, $4 for that.

Speaker: I'll have that forever.

Speaker: Nicholas Sassoon.

Speaker: This shit is dope.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Am I allowed to curse on this?

Speaker: Yes, absolutely.

Speaker: Please.

Speaker: Yeah, we'll just have to, we're going to have to tag it explicit.

Speaker: It'll be the only episode.

Speaker: No one else curses?

Speaker: No, I mean.

Speaker: We curse all the time.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: We just don't say it's explicit.

Speaker: No, we curse.

Speaker: Good.

Speaker: But yeah, before we get too much.

Speaker: You can beat me out with like a.

Speaker: I think that's worse.

Speaker: My wife wants- No, you have to do it well.

Speaker: I remember one music video when I was a kid, and it was for Daytona 500, which is a Ghostface killer song.

Speaker: The music video was Speed Racer, the actual old clips from some old Speed Racer.

Speaker: I don't know why I'm talking about this right now.

Speaker: Instead of the curse words, they didn't change the song.

Speaker: They just put car sounds.

Speaker: when the curse happens, right?

Speaker: The best thing I ever heard as a kid.

Speaker: I mean, I was like, oh, that's fucking awesome.

Speaker: Only Wu-Tang would do some shit like that.

Speaker: And that's what you can do for all the curses that I have now.

Speaker: You can find a fucking car sound.

Speaker: That's cool, because he does the editing, so whatever extra work he has to do, I'm cool with that.

Speaker: Yeah, if you find the Ghostface Killer Daytona 500 car sounds, that would be fucking... And minted as an NFT?

Speaker: I'm not trying to get into a copyright thing with Wu-Tang.

Speaker: They're pretty serious about copyright.

Speaker: They're still... Some of them have guns.

Speaker: They're from Long Island, so we can't talk.

Speaker: They're from everywhere, man.

Speaker: Wu-Tang, Staten, Shaolin, and Brooklyn.

Speaker: I think Method Man's from Hempstead, so I'll take that Long Island.

Speaker: I got some Long Island in me, so...

Speaker: Long Island also, I mean, Long Island hip hop.

Speaker: Oh, for sure.

Speaker: Rock him.

Speaker: 100%.

Speaker: But that's the same thing.

Speaker: But I think to go back before we get too much, I guess, into the NFT world.

Speaker: The real, the other Dr. Dre?

Speaker: Not the real.

Speaker: The other Dr. Dre?

Speaker: No one knows about the other Dr. Dre.

Speaker: Yeah, I'm going to need to know more about that.

Speaker: Oh, he was a... He was a DJ with Ed Lover.

Speaker: Ed Lover, yeah.

Speaker: He had Yo MTV Raps.

Speaker: That was him.

Speaker: The other guy was Dr. Dre.

Speaker: And at that point...

Speaker: The other Dr. Dre was not more popular when this guy was popular here in New York.

Speaker: Dr. Dre was a producer for early Beastie Boys records.

Speaker: And he lived in Westbury, Long Island.

Speaker: Westbury, what up?

Speaker: Yeah, I remember that.

Speaker: Anyway, what were you going to ask?

Speaker: Oh, just photography.

Speaker: How you kind of came into it.

Speaker: How it became your thing, your go-to.

Speaker: My parents allowed me to go to school for allowed...

Speaker: I only applied to art schools and they were like, okay, that's fine.

Speaker: You can do that.

Speaker: So that was cool.

Speaker: Like they were both went to high school for art, like art, high school art and design, which used to be on like 59th or 57th street in the city.

Speaker: I think it's still around there.

Speaker: But it's like a specialized high school.

Speaker: They were coming in from far.

Speaker: My dad's from the Bronx.

Speaker: Mom's from anyway.

Speaker: I've gone too far back in the story.

Speaker: I pretty much was not really good at anything else in high school or middle school.

Speaker: Like I loved art and I didn't have a photo class yet.

Speaker: But at last year of high school, I had a photo class.

Speaker: So I was like, photo is an art that you can make money at.

Speaker: And no other artist.

Speaker: You can't actually get a job doing any other art besides that.

Speaker: By yourself.

Speaker: You can be video, but at that point, you needed a crew.

Speaker: And you can't do that by yourself.

Speaker: So it's not something that you can just do.

Speaker: So that's what it was.

Speaker: I asked my parents for a camera.

Speaker: They said, yeah, well...

Speaker: We'll see if you like it.

Speaker: So like a year and a half later, they got me a camera.

Speaker: Do you remember what your first camera was?

Speaker: Nikon N50, man.

Speaker: It was a great little automatic winder.

Speaker: Because cameras didn't matter.

Speaker: I realized that cameras don't fucking matter.

Speaker: It's a lens.

Speaker: A camera does not matter.

Speaker: Maybe it will fit better on the film plate with a better camera, but that's bullshit.

Speaker: That's all bullshit.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: So yeah, yeah.

Speaker: My parents paid probably double because we bought it in Long Island instead of B&H because did not know that existed yet.

Speaker: Like that was like 15-year-olds don't know that B&H exists.

Speaker: So then got into college, went to Purchase College, which is near White Plains, which is like 25 minutes from us now.

Speaker: For visual arts, they didn't h ave a photo major.

Speaker: So I just did visual arts and focused on photography and at some point was just only taking photo classes.

Speaker: and came out of college, went back to Long Island.

Speaker: Where my parents are,

Speaker: My dad runs a... He's a manufacturing... We've had computers... We were around computers my whole life, so I already knew that that was part of my life growing up.

Speaker: I built my own computer at like 10 years old.

Speaker: Oh, wow.

Speaker: Because he was like, here's the parts.

Speaker: Fucking good luck, dude.

Speaker: Nothing to look it up on?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So I was building... He runs a manufacturing company.

Speaker: He makes remote controls for like...

Speaker: Factories and shit like that.

Speaker: So like receivers and remote.

Speaker: He makes a remote.

Speaker: He makes something in the elevator, the receiver that gets you to the top of the Empire State Building.

Speaker: That's kind of a funny.

Speaker: But anyhow,

Speaker: I was making remotes.

Speaker: I was pretty much putting resistors in green boards in the daytime when I got out of college.

Speaker: Because I refused to do a photo job.

Speaker: I got a job at the GIA, which is Gemological Institute of America.

Speaker: I got a good job.

Speaker: But at that point, it was 2004, and it was $26,000 a year.

Speaker: So I was like, damn, man, like...

Speaker: That's more than my dad's going to pay me to work in his office.

Speaker: But like, I don't want to like live alone, not have shit and then make this a little amount of money and photograph fucking jewelry all day, like just diamonds.

Speaker: And I was like, this is boring as hell.

Speaker: I don't want to do this.

Speaker: They're like, you can, you can photograph it and then we'll go, you can go to school like to come work with us and do more gem shit.

Speaker: You want to go to gem school after like, I was like, I don't want this life at all.

Speaker: Your life's could have been very different.

Speaker: And the funny shit is, like a year later, I had to photograph fucking jewelry because I wasn't making enough money working at my dad's house.

Speaker: Yeah, anyway.

Speaker: So yeah, I just did, and on the side of doing those jobs, I was photographing little things, like $100 jobs for friends.

Speaker: In college, I was photographing for friends.

Speaker: I went to Purchase College, so Purchase College is like a conservatory school.

Speaker: There's a dance program, there's a music program, classical, jazz, and modern, and there's an acting program.

Speaker: And there's an opera program.

Speaker: So you had a bunch of people that needed headshots and needed dance performances photographed, right?

Speaker: And no one can photograph a dance performance in 1996, right?

Speaker: It's very difficult.

Speaker: You need, like... I was pushing ISO 3200 film, black and white, in the darkroom to, like...

Speaker: outrageous fucking numbers but the shit was looking good because all it was is black and like almost white right like those shits were and oh man that was like a nice grain to the like good texture grain uh and i i just bought like this medium format mamiya like m645 oh dude i have the m645 oh yeah sweet that's a sweet little camera that's my favorite camera i think yeah sweet and then a month after i bought that i had a view camera class

Speaker: and then I had to sell that to get a view camera, like within six months, because that was different.

Speaker: That might have even been why I had to get rid of mine too.

Speaker: You can't keep that if you know a view camera exists.

Speaker: That's the problem with that camera.

Speaker: It's just not, anyway.

Speaker: I don't know, view cameras, that's the one you click on.

Speaker: Get under with a cloth style, like old school.

Speaker: Oh, like Ansel Adams.

Speaker: Yes, I think he used a 4.5, probably used an 8.10.

Speaker: Oh, you're talking bellows and actually physically moving the player.

Speaker: That's fantastic.

Speaker: That's amazing.

Speaker: Yeah, so it was really great to learn from people that knew how to do that, because I would not have that anywhere else.

Speaker: So, go purchase.

Speaker: And...

Speaker: Got out of school, did the little freelance jobs, and then a dude named Luke Abiel, good photographer.

Speaker: We were young, man.

Speaker: We went to school together, and he got me a job doing digital technician work for an art photographer, somebody who photographs artwork.

Speaker: So I never photographed artwork.

Speaker: I actually lied.

Speaker: I photographed... Anyway, I applied for a Guggenheim job after that, so I worked for the Guggenheim for 11 years, but I applied for that job...

Speaker: because it was a photo job and I had to lie to like kind of tell, like to say that I actually photographed.

Speaker: So, but it was, all I really want us to know is specifics because the photographing artwork is like really nerdy.

Speaker: Like there's like a whole, it's not nerdy.

Speaker: It's awesome.

Speaker: I love it.

Speaker: It's super technical.

Speaker: Super technical.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I love my peoples in it.

Speaker: Like we have our own community.

Speaker: Like we have our own, my community of museum photographers, like thousand of us.

Speaker: I photograph.

Speaker: We have power.

Speaker: We have jobs go through the database.

Speaker: Like if you need a job at a museum, boom, every week there's a new job coming through that database.

Speaker: It's kind of incredible, man.

Speaker: It's incredible, but it's super technical.

Speaker: And I was like, this one camera that no one knows how to use.

Speaker: I'm going to say I know how to use that.

Speaker: Even if you don't.

Speaker: That guy asked on the interview.

Speaker: Do you know how to use that camera?

Speaker: And I was like, yeah, I do.

Speaker: I was like, it's computers.

Speaker: I've been with them for my whole life.

Speaker: There's no way I can't figure that shit out.

Speaker: So then I got the Guggenheim job and stayed there for 11 years.

Speaker: It was great.

Speaker: It was like, it didn't pay enough, but I got like great amount of time.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's a lot of time.

Speaker: But I was doing so much other shit.

Speaker: I started a gallery then the publishing company traveled a lot.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It was fun times.

Speaker: I don't know why I was saying, oh, that's how... But I was always making little headshots for people that turned into from $100 jobs, $200 jobs, $300, and then got that Guggenheim job, which was a photo job, paying like $40,000 a year or whatever.

Speaker: And then the freelance started to kick in over the years.

Speaker: I mean, I kept making work that looked like the last work, so people kept knowing I existed.

Speaker: And...

Speaker: It just became, it's bigger.

Speaker: You know, I can work enough to like survive, which is good without having to try very hard.

Speaker: I think that's kind of the best part.

Speaker: Like I don't have to go out looking for jobs, but I also don't go out looking for jobs.

Speaker: So like, is that good or bad?

Speaker: It's probably both.

Speaker: I mean, as long as they keep showing up, it's fine.

Speaker: Yeah, but like shit, man, you can't live like that.

Speaker: Can I actually live like that?

Speaker: It's crazy.

Speaker: I keep touching the wires.

Speaker: You can touch them.

Speaker: Can you talk a little bit about your early photography series?

Speaker: Because a lot of them were like... You're talking about like on the NFTs?

Speaker: I'm talking about photography in general.

Speaker: You have like Megalopolis, like a lot of environmental, like you're going traveling.

Speaker: Yeah, I've been traveling a lot.

Speaker: The first series I made was called Permanence.

Speaker: And it was like after 11 years or so.

Speaker: Well, actually...

Speaker: I was traveling a lot where friends were because I couldn't afford hotels.

Speaker: It was like get a $400 flight to Berlin, sleep on somebody's floor for five days, and then see it in the daytime.

Speaker: Make pictures.

Speaker: Make as many pictures as possible.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: Try to get better at this.

Speaker: See something that you need to need.

Speaker: So I did that for a while, and after about 10 years, I made that into my first project, which was these kind of landscapes, nothing landscapes,

Speaker: from around the world.

Speaker: But they were connected to my friends and my group of people and some were portraits of those people that I was with.

Speaker: So it was cool, I love that.

Speaker: And on the side, there was no main project.

Speaker: It was like I was doing that and I was photographing Queens always.

Speaker: So at that point I was always like photographing, which is called a Queens affair.

Speaker: And I mean now I have like I think about seven or 8,000 decent historical photographs of Queens that like will show you something that does not exist anymore pretty much.

Speaker: It's kind of sad.

Speaker: I mean, I look back and I'm like, fuck, man, that shit's gone.

Speaker: But how nice to have a project that can continue into forever, right?

Speaker: And then it becomes this historical document that also shows the change and you can keep working on it.

Speaker: I think that most photographers don't have projects that last that long.

Speaker: They have kind of like these things that have end caps on them and they're very specific.

Speaker: start and finish.

Speaker: And so I just think it's interesting to have an open-ended thing, right?

Speaker: Yeah, it's hard to think about because it's like, if there's no ending, why am I, what is, what's the purpose?

Speaker: Right?

Speaker: Like, but for me, it's like, I just want to make the photographs.

Speaker: I'm from here.

Speaker: I see it.

Speaker: No one else is ever going to photograph these things.

Speaker: And I think they're really strange.

Speaker: So like, for me, I just want to like be able to look back whenever, because I look at the pictures a lot.

Speaker: I look back a lot to just see like all this weirdness that's changing around me.

Speaker: Do you watch Awkwafina from Queens, Norwalk from Queens?

Speaker: Wait.

Speaker: Oh, yes, yes.

Speaker: I thought you were talking about this other black lady with the Showtime show.

Speaker: What the hell's her name?

Speaker: Z-Way.

Speaker: But yeah, I love that show.

Speaker: Do you remember the episode where she travels back in time?

Speaker: And her neighborhood is the same.

Speaker: She's like, wow, this is really weird.

Speaker: But the neighborhood is exactly the same.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like, I live in Ridgewood, and the pictures are like, because they shot a Scorsese movie, like, during the pandemic.

Speaker: The one with the fake faces?

Speaker: I forget.

Speaker: The long Irish one.

Speaker: I forget what it was, like, three hours.

Speaker: The Irishman.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: The fake faces.

Speaker: And they didn't have to do anything.

Speaker: They just had to put old cars.

Speaker: They put old cars in front of the houses, and that was it.

Speaker: That was it.

Speaker: The stage manager was like, oh, okay.

Speaker: We got it.

Speaker: We got it.

Speaker: That's right.

Speaker: I was just talking about that like a few nights ago.

Speaker: Like Ridgewood never changes.

Speaker: Middle Village never changes.

Speaker: Like they just can't yet.

Speaker: They will.

Speaker: Of course.

Speaker: Ridgewood's won't change.

Speaker: Of course.

Speaker: They can't change because they have these like old two-story houses for people that they're never giving them up.

Speaker: It's just not happening.

Speaker: I mean, they will when it's like $4 million for those things.

Speaker: Of course.

Speaker: There's a price.

Speaker: Just wait for inflation.

Speaker: Is that series, so the Queen series you keep going back to obviously.

Speaker: Yeah, I just keep shooting.

Speaker: So I have a camera in the bag or my coat now.

Speaker: So always.

Speaker: Like we have to photograph this.

Speaker: What is this thing?

Speaker: It's new sky, indoor skydiving.

Speaker: What?

Speaker: Half block.

Speaker: Half block.

Speaker: Other side of the bridge.

Speaker: Really?

Speaker: You see this weird white structure going up inside of a building.

Speaker: With a fan and you can just go in there.

Speaker: What?

Speaker: I fly, sorry.

Speaker: This is over.

Speaker: This interview is over.

Speaker: Let's move it over to the iFly.

Speaker: I know.

Speaker: That's the next one.

Speaker: We'll be in there with lab mics.

Speaker: I also saw the Bronx project where you go around and similar.

Speaker: The Bronx was like... Half of my family is in the Bronx.

Speaker: South Bronx.

Speaker: I've always wanted to walk around and make photographs of the neighborhood because it was different.

Speaker: The Bronx is...

Speaker: wasn't leveled.

Speaker: So like, you know, Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan,

Speaker: were leveled out so that you can make a gridded system on the streets.

Speaker: But the Bronx, they didn't do that because it was like no one lived there at that point when they were starting to do that stuff.

Speaker: And also poor people live there.

Speaker: So no need to make it easy, right?

Speaker: So everything's these weird hills.

Speaker: Streets are like staircases, like 188th Street, not that street, but like multiple streets are just staircases, which is kind of incredible.

Speaker: And then on the staircases are apartments and stuff like up it.

Speaker: to like doors to your home so it's like that's weird i want to photograph what like that but i did that like that project was one day because i was getting paid to do that like i had the idea but then a organization named the architecture league of new york or urban omnibus is their their magazine they asked me to photograph the bronx but i was like they they had only a small budget i think it was like 500 bucks and i was like

Speaker: I can do it for a day.

Speaker: So I woke up at like 10 AM on like a gray Saturday, fucking bright gray, man.

Speaker: It was like the best.

Speaker: I couldn't be better.

Speaker: I had a sunset.

Speaker: It was bright gray all day and then a sunset.

Speaker: Boom, man.

Speaker: Made some goodies.

Speaker: That was a good day.

Speaker: I walked about 24 miles and just went from like, you know, the bottom of the Bronx, bottom of the Bronx, like around Grand Concourse, Yankee Stadium area and then went up to Riverdale.

Speaker: which is a lot of walking.

Speaker: But that was cool.

Speaker: Those images are intriguing.

Speaker: I love seeing it literally through your lens.

Speaker: It looks otherworldly.

Speaker: It looks like some kind of strange European country.

Speaker: You can see that something's not right.

Speaker: I think that's when you're seeing pictures and you're like,

Speaker: It's not what you think this city looks like.

Speaker: So I think that's why.

Speaker: And it shows the racism in the city.

Speaker: I mean, you can see it in those pictures.

Speaker: So I think that's why I kind of make the work I make now based on thinking that way about projects.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So that's a good one.

Speaker: That was a freelance job that led to a bunch of other freelance jobs that led me kind of to the work I'm making now.

Speaker: Yeah, I was curious how how often, like commissioned or editorial work kind of like

Speaker: allowed you to make personal work or was the same work, right?

Speaker: Because I think photographers get lucky that way sometimes, right?

Speaker: I don't know if anything's luck, man.

Speaker: But I would say that getting a job is definitely not luck.

Speaker: You work very fucking hard for it every single time.

Speaker: Even though sometimes you get an easy job or a job that comes to you and you're like, oh, well, thank you.

Speaker: I didn't know that was going to happen this week kind of shit.

Speaker: That happens.

Speaker: But usually it's like,

Speaker: you've dealt with some real shit to try to make one good photograph.

Speaker: I just mean like, you know, like the work goes into a magazine or online for like an article, but then it actually can exist as a personal project as a part of your own portfolio.

Speaker: I feel like other artists don't get those types of jobs that often, right?

Speaker: Maybe illustrators.

Speaker: Yeah, I think most people get jobs that are like, can't be personal.

Speaker: Like I have a lot of great like tabletop photographers.

Speaker: that usually you're like, here, photograph this Coke can, man.

Speaker: I mean, like, this is the job.

Speaker: It's not like I can go out and, like, photograph what I want.

Speaker: Well, not what I ever want, but, like,

Speaker: there's some leeway where I don't have to tell them what I'm doing.

Speaker: Like they say, this is the idea, we've agreed on the idea, now I'm gonna go try to make some photographs that actually work for this idea.

Speaker: And you can like them or hate them, but these are the photographs.

Speaker: And that's kind of, I think I learned that in school too.

Speaker: It was just like, I had professors that were like, you know, fuck everyone else.

Speaker: If you think that that is something that needs to be seen, then like that's kind of how it has to be.

Speaker: So maybe that's not gotten me second jobs with a lot of companies.

Speaker: I imagine that it has definitely closed a lot of doors.

Speaker: But yeah, fuck that, I don't care, whatever.

Speaker: I mean, it seems to be working, right?

Speaker: It's all right.

Speaker: It's all right so far.

Speaker: I mean, it's like, it could be better.

Speaker: It could be worse, though, for real.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Well, let's talk about some of the new work that that led you to.

Speaker: So Bleak Reality, that was a Vanity Fair project.

Speaker: Commission?

Speaker: Yeah, so I think when that was, I think that was 2015 or 16, and I was working with a woman named Kiara that was also a purchase person, a few, way, like, younger, much younger, but I ran a gallery in Brooklyn for two and a half years in, like, 2009, and she would come with another one of her friends, Jules Slewski.

Speaker: who I work with all these people all the time now.

Speaker: We make books together.

Speaker: We do a lot together.

Speaker: And Kiara called and she was like, I have a project.

Speaker: I want to do something with Black Lives Matter.

Speaker: It was when Black Lives Matter was just picking up.

Speaker: And I think that the jobs come to me when the world's burning because I'm photographing landscape in a way that I don't think a lot of other black people can or do get hired for.

Speaker: I would say that probably maybe no other...

Speaker: Anyway, not no other, but definitely landscape, architecture, photography is a limited field for black people.

Speaker: so i get the call but kiara was like damn i left it and i like she liked the work uh from the past and like she she's seen it for so long like more than like most other people had so it was a connection that way that they were like hey we want to do something for black lives matter we don't quite know exactly what it is but we want to go to locations where these things have happened and try to figure out like how to make work there and i was like

Speaker: So I was like, yeah, cool.

Speaker: Let me think about it.

Speaker: I'll do the research, try to figure out what places that actually, I wanted to go to places that were obvious killings, not like he also had a weapon or like no, no, like kind of ambiguous anything.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And I wanted to go at the times that it happened.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So I was trying to photograph at the exact time that they happened in real life.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: So yeah, so pretty much that Bronx job led to that.

Speaker: So eventually, I mean, in about two days, I was like, look, I'm not gonna do this job for like $4,000.

Speaker: Like this is like traveling to eight cities.

Speaker: That's a big, big job.

Speaker: So I was like, if you pay for, but I still did it for mad cheap, dude.

Speaker: Like I think about it now, I'm like, I know that I got paid $6,500 to go to eight cities and photograph eight locations

Speaker: And I was like, bet, dude.

Speaker: I was like, look, I can get these flights, like, because it was like pretty much like what I do on a, because I still had a day job.

Speaker: So I still had to do this on the weekends, kind of.

Speaker: Or I just didn't want to use my vacation time because I got a lot of days.

Speaker: Google time gives you a lot of vacation days.

Speaker: Like, if,

Speaker: 30 vacation days plus on like literally unlimited sick days.

Speaker: They give you a sick day a month and then cruise until you hit 45, dude.

Speaker: What?

Speaker: Not if you don't want to get paid.

Speaker: Oh, there's a cat.

Speaker: There's a cat.

Speaker: But also, right, you're not trying to take a vacation to go work.

Speaker: You got good medical, too.

Speaker: This shit was a good job.

Speaker: I mean, like, my boss stayed there for he's still there.

Speaker: And it's he's been there longer than I've been alive.

Speaker: So I was like, I'm not moving on.

Speaker: Does he have a side hustle?

Speaker: Freelance photography.

Speaker: He's a landscape architect.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And he's good.

Speaker: He's been there for a long time.

Speaker: He does his job.

Speaker: I don't know what I was talking about.

Speaker: You were talking about... So Bleak Reality.

Speaker: So how it kind of came about.

Speaker: Oh, and you got paid not a lot of money to go to a lot of places.

Speaker: $6,500 to go to eight places.

Speaker: And that was cool, man.

Speaker: Because I remember booking $200.

Speaker: So I'd fly on Friday night.

Speaker: Fly on Friday night, go to Charleston, South Carolina.

Speaker: Charleston, is that the name of it?

Speaker: Is that Charleston, the city on the water?

Speaker: Charleston, South Carolina to photograph in the morning and then fly right after that photograph to I think Minnesota to photograph where this dude Freddie Gray or no, it's sad because it's like the names man died like a few weeks earlier.

Speaker: Oh, so it was still like a Kai Gurley.

Speaker: It was still fresh.

Speaker: Yeah, but I didn't know.

Speaker: I mean, I was I was I was just booking flights.

Speaker: I didn't actually know that it was that close.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But when I went there, it was like Minnesota State Fair was happening in the parking lot right next to where this like vigil like kind of shit was going down.

Speaker: I was like, dude, this is a weird, like, I had to walk through the whole state fair to get to it because I was let in a cab at the front of it.

Speaker: Like, it was weird, man.

Speaker: Minnesota's weird.

Speaker: But I haven't seen it that much, so I can't really say that.

Speaker: So I did this on weekends.

Speaker: I would do that, and then I'd then go to Cleveland that, like, next morning to shoot the third thing that weekend and then go back to work on Monday morning and do that three weekends in a row to get, like, the job done.

Speaker: It was cool.

Speaker: I spent about $4,500 on travel.

Speaker: Maybe five grand on travel and bucketed $1,500.

Speaker: Made the photographs and like had the photographs.

Speaker: Because you don't usually get a job that's going to pay you like photograph eight murder scenes.

Speaker: I mean, that's like not really a normal-ass job.

Speaker: So you have to like work with what they'll give you, you know?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like to me, I was like, it was worth more to just work with it than to kind of like not get this job and not have the opportunity to like shoot it.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: yeah yeah i mean there's like value in the project itself right but photographing that then led to like two google jobs which are more like on like they're out they're on my website but like they they were just like company like google jobs there but it was always for like a kind of a cause and those causes were awesome and then then that led to like nat geo seeing it and then working with them so

Speaker: It's been a progression of just that first shooting the Bronx, pretty much.

Speaker: That's cool.

Speaker: Yeah, I hadn't seen the Vanity Fair piece, but the pavilion where Tamir Rice was murdered, I saw it in Chicago at the Stoney Island Arts Bank when it was disassembled.

Speaker: And so when I was researching for this podcast, I looked it up and I realized they had reconstructed it, so it's up there now.

Speaker: Oh, really?

Speaker: On site, or at least it was recently, I think.

Speaker: It was like a temporary home for it, because I think they were looking for it.

Speaker: for a proper spot.

Speaker: Damn.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Goddamn.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This is a really, this is fun, man.

Speaker: Check, you see this brickwork up here?

Speaker: It's crazy.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: It's like steps of bricks.

Speaker: Is this the roof?

Speaker: Are we on the roof?

Speaker: We're on the fourth floor.

Speaker: We're not.

Speaker: Fourth floor.

Speaker: I think there's six.

Speaker: I feel like they didn't finish this space.

Speaker: I think there's supposed to be another nice wall like this.

Speaker: Nah, fuck that wall.

Speaker: This is way better.

Speaker: Kind of.

Speaker: A little bit.

Speaker: It is hard to nail stuff into that concrete.

Speaker: Impossible, probably.

Speaker: You're going to need a fucking real drill for that.

Speaker: I don't even know how to do it.

Speaker: Like I have to do this in the studio that I have now because it's like half brick.

Speaker: It's a problem, man.

Speaker: You can borrow, we have one of those.

Speaker: We bought a hammer drill.

Speaker: It's like, it's the loudest thing I've ever heard.

Speaker: It's

Speaker: Because we got to hang projectors from the ceiling sometimes for shows.

Speaker: I hope you made the holes and you can just do it over and over again.

Speaker: We're always putting things in different spots.

Speaker: Why would you put it in the same place?

Speaker: We're really bad gallerists.

Speaker: They sell those low projectors now that you push up, right?

Speaker: Those short throws?

Speaker: They're not expensive.

Speaker: They're not?

Speaker: They are.

Speaker: Of course.

Speaker: How does the Testament project work?

Speaker: So I really like the way you use color to amplify color and portraiture.

Speaker: How does that factor in and where does that come in?

Speaker: I think I was just trying to figure out what would give someone their own agency in a photograph.

Speaker: Like natural light is what we're in, or artificial or natural light usually.

Speaker: There's been projects where people are photographing like UV.

Speaker: There's been...

Speaker: but people still don't have control of what that looks like.

Speaker: So I was trying to figure out how to give people control of at least color on their skin.

Speaker: And that was kind of it.

Speaker: I mean, that's how I started thinking about it.

Speaker: I mean, it took many years, a few years to kind of figure out anything that would... I wanted to photograph black men because all these black men were being murdered on TV, like from that bleak reality job work.

Speaker: I wanted to do something with portraits.

Speaker: And I also made videos.

Speaker: So there are those colorful portraits.

Speaker: Men, I did for a year and then photographed women the year after that.

Speaker: Or, you know, anyway, I guess that's like, no, can you even say that anymore?

Speaker: And then...

Speaker: But it took a few years to get to that.

Speaker: It was like making just terrible photographs for a few years to try to figure out like what I was trying to say.

Speaker: But then it happened and I photographed pretty quickly.

Speaker: I mean, it was only about three or four months of photography and then everything else was showing it for some years.

Speaker: And I also made video content, tons of video content.

Speaker: So like there's like a story, every person that has a photograph pretty much told me a story about how they were like kind of

Speaker: you know, typecast or treated poorly because of their race.

Speaker: And it was interesting stories.

Speaker: It was cool.

Speaker: It was like, I never heard that shit before.

Speaker: Even from like friends, cousins, like my brothers, like they were telling me stories after a few drinks.

Speaker: You do have whiskey here, don't you?

Speaker: And they were telling me shit that I'd never heard them say before.

Speaker: And I was like, whoa, this is like,

Speaker: Interesting.

Speaker: And then I just made video content because I didn't know how to do it.

Speaker: I would have people holding, like, you know, the mic that goes up, the fucking hidden mic.

Speaker: I had people holding that in their hands.

Speaker: People were like, you can't have people hold shit.

Speaker: I was like, dude, whatever, man.

Speaker: I need to get the story.

Speaker: We're on a turnpike.

Speaker: There's mad cars.

Speaker: It's the only way I can do it.

Speaker: Anyway, so anyway.

Speaker: Yeah, so video content and some writing also.

Speaker: Then made some books and showed it around for a long time.

Speaker: But it was pretty much to give people agency back a little bit.

Speaker: Yeah, they're wonderful images.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: They're strong, and I love the way that, like you said, it's almost redignifying dignity or bringing back some kind of dignity.

Speaker: I hope so, man.

Speaker: I mean, like, I tried to do something a little different, but...

Speaker: Yeah, it worked out.

Speaker: I mean, so far, the art doesn't die, right?

Speaker: We get to kind of live with it.

Speaker: We'll see where it goes next.

Speaker: That's what I was going to say is it's like, and photography especially is funny that way.

Speaker: It morphs over time quite a bit, I think.

Speaker: Totally.

Speaker: And you see it everywhere.

Speaker: You see it other places, you know, like,

Speaker: You see it other places, for sure.

Speaker: Which is cool.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, if stuff stayed the same all the time, it would get boring.

Speaker: Real quick.

Speaker: Sometimes it does.

Speaker: But that's a wonderful thing about NFTs is you've been able to... I mean, some of the subject matter is...

Speaker: it's heady right like photographing these sites where these these individuals were murdered or um talking about race and color um and then like you were saying initially i think you're saying that some of this stuff doesn't necessarily hang in a gallery or go to a museum but it can definitely be sold as an nft and people are ready to kind of like um engage with it redistribute it it's it's just a it's an open place and it's that kind of

Speaker: I mean, I don't know how much money you guys have, but I can't go into a gallery and buy shit.

Speaker: Like, if it's in a gallery, I'm pretty sure I can't afford it.

Speaker: Right?

Speaker: And that's not cool, man.

Speaker: It's not good for, like, humanity.

Speaker: Like, most people on Earth do not want to go to places where they can just not even consider, I mean,

Speaker: Art galleries are not supposed to be for... Well, you know what?

Speaker: It is.

Speaker: Art museums are not supposed to be for sales, but art galleries are.

Speaker: So art museums don't show shit.

Speaker: They show 10, 20 shows a year.

Speaker: They cost a lot of money.

Speaker: They're dealing with a lot of stuff.

Speaker: They're never showing people that don't have a name.

Speaker: I mean, it's like...

Speaker: I shouldn't say it like that, but I should say, like, I have no shot at being photographed, like, shown at the moment unless I either know somebody or, like, I don't know.

Speaker: Or a collector has donated.

Speaker: Probably knows somebody.

Speaker: Or a collector has donated your work to them in some capacity.

Speaker: That could work, but that usually just sits in the basement.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: Like that's kind of what happens with that.

Speaker: Not a basement.

Speaker: It's in a cool rack.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That's funny though.

Speaker: We were, we had our former professor on and we were, we were debating a little bit about all the like blue chip galleries and how they're,

Speaker: you know, only, you know, they're only clients that can actually buy stuff are insanely wealthy, right?

Speaker: And he's like, yeah, but like, that's public?

Speaker: And he's like, some of those shows are good.

Speaker: And he's, I think he had a little bit of a point there.

Speaker: And like, especially in the last couple of years, they've been showing a lot of work that's a little...

Speaker: more thoughtful or a little more- The galleries.

Speaker: The galleries.

Speaker: Oh, the galleries are awesome.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, like you, there's so many of them, you can't really make any, you can't like make any judgments on them.

Speaker: They're like, everybody's doing a different thing on different floors of their own buildings at this point.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's all out there.

Speaker: It's all out there.

Speaker: Which is, which is nice for the public.

Speaker: Right?

Speaker: Totally.

Speaker: Totally.

Speaker: But you know, it's,

Speaker: But the public has to know it's there, right?

Speaker: And does the public know that, you know, does the public know that, like, David's Werner's having a show on Thursday at 6 p.m.?

Speaker: Are they really inviting, like, people in their real, like, the community of New York City to, like, see this shit?

Speaker: I don't fucking think so.

Speaker: And it's not welcoming for everyone, right?

Speaker: It's like there's rules and, like, there's an atmosphere.

Speaker: Yeah, but I also don't think it's the gallery.

Speaker: I mean, I don't think it's on the gallery to invite anyone to their...

Speaker: I think that they could do whatever the fuck they want.

Speaker: No, no, no.

Speaker: This is like a systemic thing, right?

Speaker: It's like the market.

Speaker: It is what it is.

Speaker: It's everything, right?

Speaker: It is what it is.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: But that becomes... It is what it is becomes like... It's like... There's no movement.

Speaker: Like, there's not enough movement.

Speaker: And there can't be because there's just not... There's gatekeepers and then there's... Everyone has to work outside of that system.

Speaker: And that's kind of where NFT comes to place where you can say like, look, if I can build my own following, then I can...

Speaker: I can get something that like, I run the publishing company and it's like people buy all the books.

Speaker: Like there's some people that buy all the books because they like them.

Speaker: You know, that's good enough, right?

Speaker: And there's no difference between those books and the NFTs that we're selling.

Speaker: There's like no difference.

Speaker: Like it's just, I fucking want to support that project.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: And I don't think that like book collectors, like art book collectors and lovers are the same people as NFT collectors, but I think they're like the same kind of people.

Speaker: But I collect both.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So it's like, you know, I try to go into NFT making zero judgments.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: And probably putting out work that also...

Speaker: I think what I've been doing with NFT is releasing work for the most part, like this kind of Confederate and like American history work.

Speaker: A lot of that's online because I wanted people to have to

Speaker: deal with the conflict in a way that was, and the pictures aren't of conflict.

Speaker: They're not of like, I'm not taking a side, but people think, people feel like, feel so much about these photographs that they think I am.

Speaker: And then they start talking mad shit, man.

Speaker: It's awesome to see.

Speaker: It's like crazy to see.

Speaker: If you ever want to see crazy shit, if you go to my pictures on Matt Gio, at Matt Gio on Instagram, you will see comments that are incredible.

Speaker: Like,

Speaker: thousands like they have such a reach yeah big up to Nat Geo I love you guys but yeah they have a big reach and they have a big reach yeah and they don't censor the comments I don't think you can censor comments I don't think you can turn it no you can't turn them off on Instagram you just have comments wow that so if you get like 8,000 comments on like a picture of like a graffiti all over the Robert E. Lee monument yeah

Speaker: I mean, also comments are good for the algorithm, so nobody really wants to turn them off even though, you know, who knows?

Speaker: Yeah, it's cool.

Speaker: I mean, I was looking through this shit was interesting.

Speaker: Yeah, I recorded it because I was like, I need to just make screenshots of some of this.

Speaker: It's so good.

Speaker: So bad.

Speaker: Yeah, that's some homework for me.

Speaker: No, don't do that.

Speaker: Never look at the comments.

Speaker: There's a time and a place, and it's over.

Speaker: You're talking about NFTs.

Speaker: You're not in it in a small way.

Speaker: You started at Quantum.

Speaker: You have this digital publishing house as well, which publishes digital books of NFT photo books.

Speaker: Yeah, totally.

Speaker: So that's KGPNFT.

Speaker: Yeah, we're just working on our next project.

Speaker: I think our website is kind of like

Speaker: It's nothing right now, which is good.

Speaker: We're trying to figure out how to make it work.

Speaker: What I really want is for things to get better in America with regulations so that we can do this the right way.

Speaker: Do I still need a separate website

Speaker: Because I have those Squarespace websites that you mentioned, like a few of them, maybe three of them actually, and they sell well.

Speaker: Like all things are like working smoothly.

Speaker: I don't have to deal with any bullshit.

Speaker: I can change things on my phone whenever I need to.

Speaker: So it's, they work and that's why I use it.

Speaker: And it makes me money because I don't have to worry about it.

Speaker: And yeah,

Speaker: When they let you buy with Ether, then great.

Speaker: Great.

Speaker: Easy.

Speaker: Like, it's a super simple, like, just give me the option.

Speaker: And then now you are Web3 company and I can take Ether for those books and grow my following.

Speaker: Like, it's I don't know what your question was, actually.

Speaker: I was just thinking about that because I was like, why?

Speaker: Why is this fucking taking so long?

Speaker: But I was just thinking about that today because I just registered our lydianstater.tez address and we have the lydianstater.eth address.

Speaker: And that's like, it's just like one step closer to being Venmo when you have an address like that.

Speaker: Because then all you need is for people to have ether, right?

Speaker: That's very true.

Speaker: That's a good way to put it, actually.

Speaker: That should be like an ad for ENS.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But it is, I mean, like, it is, we think it's slow because we're in the middle of it, but it really hasn't been that long.

Speaker: And those are the kinds of steps that have to happen.

Speaker: And then as soon as some big company integrates it in like an easy, smooth way where like people are putting in their credit card and they're actually paying in Ether, then it's like, you know.

Speaker: But is that going to happen?

Speaker: I mean, I think there's a lot of people who don't want it to.

Speaker: So I don't know.

Speaker: I think that's a question mark.

Speaker: Yeah, that's a problem, man.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, it's not ideal.

Speaker: That's what we're in right now.

Speaker: It's like every day.

Speaker: But I have been, I've been, I've been surprised at where, uh, our supporters for the projects we've been doing have come from, um, in, in terms of the crypto space.

Speaker: It's not, you know, it's not who I necessarily would think would jump in and throw us a thousand bucks worth of ether, you know, but it happens and that's, uh, it keeps it going.

Speaker: It keeps it going.

Speaker: And it, and I think it says something about,

Speaker: the people who are excited about that space who are willing to kind of like throw some money at some things that they care about.

Speaker: It's funny who's more open-minded because our thing has always been onboarding traditional artists into the kind of the crypto NFT space and then trying to kind of cultivate collectors from the art world space and seeing if they can kind of, kind of join in on this project and also try to bring in crypto people and,

Speaker: And it seems like the people that are on the crypto side are a little bit more open-minded.

Speaker: And they're the ones that kind of like are more interested in kind of like finding out more about the artists we represent and maybe even their traditional artworks that they have, like say photography, whether it's painting or sculpture.

Speaker: It seems like the other side is a little bit still to this day a little bit more skeptical as far as like.

Speaker: Yeah, that's true.

Speaker: But so it's been an interesting ride so far.

Speaker: Super new, right?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's been a year.

Speaker: I mean, it's not been a year.

Speaker: It's been seven years, six, seven years and two serious years, two and a half serious years.

Speaker: Mainstream-ish years.

Speaker: That's really young.

Speaker: We'll see what happens.

Speaker: When did you first get into NFTs?

Speaker: I was thinking about it at the beginning of 2021.

Speaker: Wait, what's COVID year?

Speaker: 2020 or 2020?

Speaker: 2021.

Speaker: After kind of the initial... I think when they said that they had like, they may have made a vaccine, I was starting to get more pop-like busy.

Speaker: Oh, shit.

Speaker: I don't know why.

Speaker: See, I was thinking like, he must know these Topo Chico bottles because like, he must have been...

Speaker: That one was fine.

Speaker: They do have a lot of spice in them, though, for sure.

Speaker: A lot of spice.

Speaker: Oh, shit.

Speaker: Anyway, you were saying?

Speaker: I don't remember.

Speaker: Oh, 2020.

Speaker: Yeah, 2021, March, February.

Speaker: I was working with a dude named Justin Navarro Sano really early on.

Speaker: Or just not working with, but kind of like just kind of getting into the scene, like learning.

Speaker: learning and building a base of people that gave a shit, I think.

Speaker: It wasn't a lot, it was enough to get me addicted.

Speaker: I think it was like kind of, you make this eight sales and you see your wallet has $16,000 in it or something like that.

Speaker: And you're like, fuck man, like I just made $16,000 selling like artwork.

Speaker: I haven't done that in prints in years.

Speaker: right or ever and then you're like i would like to know more about this thing i'd like to know everything about this thing in this space right totally yeah and and it gave someone the opportunity to own something that like someone has it like someone actually owns that shit like it's a weird picture like i made it because i was weird and someone actually gave a shit that it was weird and bought it like that is cool and like

Speaker: I don't give a shit.

Speaker: I sell shit for $100 still.

Speaker: Like, I mean, that was the – anyway.

Speaker: But, yeah, I don't care how much it costs.

Speaker: I just want, like, people to own stuff.

Speaker: And I think it's, like – I go with the times.

Speaker: If some people are selling shit for this now, then I'm going to sell some stuff.

Speaker: And if people are selling stuff for more expensive, I'm going to try to sell some stuff.

Speaker: You know, it's – I mean, that's how the market works, right?

Speaker: I don't – some people just go up.

Speaker: Some people just try to get more and more or, like, at least keep a certain level of money coming in.

Speaker: And I think that's cool, too.

Speaker: It's just a different game.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Are you speaking at the conference coming up again?

Speaker: I feel like we saw you at the last... This is NFT NYC?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, I just booked a trip out of New York for that.

Speaker: I didn't even know.

Speaker: I didn't know the dates.

Speaker: No one invited me to anything, so I didn't know the dates.

Speaker: So I'm out.

Speaker: Good for you.

Speaker: No, it's going to be fun.

Speaker: That was fun.

Speaker: I love it.

Speaker: I love the talks.

Speaker: I love the parties.

Speaker: It's always random.

Speaker: And it's all high-class, inclusive, good food, good parties.

Speaker: How much does it cost to do that?

Speaker: Like how much it costs to be a person at FTNYC?

Speaker: An actual person if you're not like speaking?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I think, well, I think tickets are 500 bucks and the VIP tickets are 1600.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: What does that get you?

Speaker: It like gets you into like all the stuff and like the VIP, you get lunch every day and like VIP lounge or whatever.

Speaker: But really they're like, they're like,

Speaker: crowdsourcing all of their speakers.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So I mean, they have some keynotes that I'm sure that they're paying money, but everybody else is like getting free entry.

Speaker: And then the people who actually pay are just like paying double for the people who are speaking to not have to pay.

Speaker: That's I mean, that's my opinion on their business model.

Speaker: That is a good way to put it.

Speaker: But it seems to work.

Speaker: No shade.

Speaker: It's a lot to put on a conference like that.

Speaker: I would never.

Speaker: It's pretty well done, in my opinion.

Speaker: It's clean.

Speaker: It's at the fucking Marriott.

Speaker: Or not the Marriott, but is it the Marriott?

Speaker: Yeah, I think it's at the Marriott.

Speaker: It's good, they have good locations.

Speaker: They're doing their thing.

Speaker: Congratulations to them.

Speaker: I mean, they're fucking really doing it.

Speaker: Somebody has to do it.

Speaker: Margaritaville, that's the other venue they had.

Speaker: They were in the Margaritaville.

Speaker: Margaritaville's a Jimmy Buffett restaurant?

Speaker: Yeah, in Times Square.

Speaker: Yeah, they had the pool floor rented out.

Speaker: And I remember I went with my swimsuit excited to go swimming.

Speaker: Nobody was swimming.

Speaker: Dude, you can't swim in front of other humans like that.

Speaker: I had no idea.

Speaker: And there was people with VR headsets by the pool.

Speaker: But not in the pool?

Speaker: Not in the pool.

Speaker: That seems dangerous.

Speaker: It was not what I was hoping for.

Speaker: There was multiple people with the VR helmets.

Speaker: I think there was only one, but it was enough for me to be like, what is going on here?

Speaker: I have nobody swimming.

Speaker: I'm not feeling this shit.

Speaker: Anyways, well, we'll miss you this year.

Speaker: Have fun.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: As much as you can.

Speaker: This time, pool.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You should be the only person swimming.

Speaker: I feel like that's not a good thing.

Speaker: I'm not going to be that guy.

Speaker: I can't.

Speaker: I really can't.

Speaker: I don't know, man.

Speaker: That would take a lot of drinks.

Speaker: So what's in the future for Quantum and...

Speaker: So for Quantum, I'm out.

Speaker: You're up?

Speaker: I'm like, we're like, things are changing a lot, and I'm going to just go and do... That's right.

Speaker: You said a new name, right?

Speaker: What's the name of the new project?

Speaker: Oh, no.

Speaker: Quantum still exists, and Quasars, I think, is what you're talking about.

Speaker: No, wait.

Speaker: I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker: Oh, I guess I don't know.

Speaker: So I'm focusing more on the KGP NFT.

Speaker: Figuring out like what...

Speaker: Cause I think what I'm going to try to figure out is how to get like the museums and like the cultural institutions to, to need to be on the blockchain.

Speaker: So that's kind of what we're trying to figure out with that.

Speaker: Like what kind of project can you put together that really requires a blockchain?

Speaker: Like not just NFT, like what I can't, I can't keep talking about this, but like something a little bit more that connects you

Speaker: It's just, yeah, something.

Speaker: I don't know what it is.

Speaker: Did you see that recently?

Speaker: The Pompidou collected, it was like 30 years.

Speaker: I thought that's cool.

Speaker: Pompidou collected some shit.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's happening.

Speaker: It's starting.

Speaker: Slow but steady.

Speaker: I know.

Speaker: That's really crazy because one goes and then you're like, you need to, like, I've been trying to sell to a major museum in New York for a while and they're just like, it's a little early, man.

Speaker: Like, we don't know if we're going to do that.

Speaker: at all.

Speaker: And I'm like, dude, come on, just like fucking, I'll give it to you for free.

Speaker: Just put it in your collection, man.

Speaker: What are we talking about?

Speaker: Just get a wallet.

Speaker: Give me the name of the person with the NFT wallet at that museum and then like, hook me up, dude.

Speaker: Like, what are we talking about?

Speaker: Like,

Speaker: Anyway, so it's, I think it will start at some point.

Speaker: If the Pobby dude's doing it, then you have more, say like, yo, check this shit out, man.

Speaker: Like, come on, man.

Speaker: We're for real.

Speaker: Let's do this.

Speaker: I mean, all you need is you need the first and then you need a follower, right?

Speaker: Isn't that like a theory?

Speaker: You like need the first person to do a thing and then like somebody to follow him and then the floodgates are open.

Speaker: Yeah, the Bronx.

Speaker: I'll take it.

Speaker: Bronx.

Speaker: And then Queens.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This motherfucker, man.

Speaker: I love it.

Speaker: He's a Queens kid at heart.

Speaker: I dig it, man.

Speaker: I feel you.

Speaker: I feel you.

Speaker: Brooklyn has something to say about this too.

Speaker: Of course.

Speaker: Goddamn.

Speaker: Hip hop, man.

Speaker: So do the museums ask, I'm sure there's apprehensions about what rights do they get with the NFTs, display modalities.

Speaker: I mean, are those the questions?

Speaker: I don't think that's too much.

Speaker: Isn't it just like image?

Speaker: Can we get our board to agree that we need to buy NFTs?

Speaker: Do we even want to tell the board that these things exist and that we need them?

Speaker: I think that's the point.

Speaker: That's where it's at now.

Speaker: It's not like, oh, the screen is like, they don't give a fuck.

Speaker: I don't think they give a fuck.

Speaker: They're buying old VHS tapes from Namjoon Pikes.

Speaker: They're getting historical data that will never look good.

Speaker: So they do not care about the like they care about the value that it brings to society or some sort of cultural reference.

Speaker: That's what I think the museums are about.

Speaker: So once someone comes to a museum with something that looks good, then they'll have to get it.

Speaker: It just has to be the right thing.

Speaker: I don't know what that is.

Speaker: It's something.

Speaker: It's gonna be a mix of things.

Speaker: It's not gonna be just like four paintings by like a famous painter that we need.

Speaker: It's gonna be like a connection to that painting through a web app that gets you or on web three app that gets you to, I don't know.

Speaker: Is it gonna be like Jeff Koons moon pieces?

Speaker: Have you seen those things?

Speaker: It's not gonna be Jeff Koons.

Speaker: They're like literally shipping stuff to the moon.

Speaker: It costs like a million dollars or something to buy in.

Speaker: Yo, this guy needs to go away.

Speaker: He's got really good health care.

Speaker: Of course he does.

Speaker: Dude, this guy is like...

Speaker: It's not good.

Speaker: Whatever is happening with this whole like people liking him.

Speaker: That's like, I mean, I don't know, man.

Speaker: It was fun.

Speaker: I'm on.

Speaker: I shouldn't say things like that out loud, but like enough is enough, dude.

Speaker: Like there's so many artists like trying to like have a living making artwork and you're giving this dude a hundred million dollars.

Speaker: Just fuck off.

Speaker: I don't know, man.

Speaker: I'm not.

Speaker: I can't be that.

Speaker: I can't agree.

Speaker: I can't agree to that.

Speaker: I'm on the Pace Verso Discord channel.

Speaker: I love Pace.

Speaker: I work with Pace.

Speaker: So they're doing the Jeff Koons Moon Project.

Speaker: Oh, are they?

Speaker: See?

Speaker: Still love Pace.

Speaker: You got trapped.

Speaker: No, you got to do what you got to do, right?

Speaker: In this world, you got to do what you got to do.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: But anyways, on the Discord, they like launched the project and said how much it was going to cost.

Speaker: And all the users were like, uh, that's more money than we can spend.

Speaker: How much is it going to cost?

Speaker: I think you can buy like fractions.

Speaker: I think they're literally a million dollars.

Speaker: What are you talking about?

Speaker: I don't understand what the project... You know what?

Speaker: You don't want to.

Speaker: It's done.

Speaker: It's something that's going to the moon and you have to pay a million dollars as a human being to buy it.

Speaker: How many people can buy it?

Speaker: I think there's like an addition.

Speaker: Maybe it's 10 or 20 or something.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: That's easy.

Speaker: So you buy.

Speaker: 10 million bucks for a pig?

Speaker: You get the NFT and then like he ships a rock to the moon or something and it's your rock and it goes there.

Speaker: Oh, bam.

Speaker: Can't you still buy moon craters for like 40 bucks?

Speaker: Is that a thing?

Speaker: You can buy the name of the crater or some shit.

Speaker: Oh, you mean name it on the... You can name shit on the moon for sure.

Speaker: And you can definitely name shit on Mars for hundreds of dollars.

Speaker: For sure.

Speaker: I mean, lydianstater.eth is the name of my crater.

Speaker: That's my cash app handle.

Speaker: You can send me money.

Speaker: Send me money there.

Speaker: Oh, man.

Speaker: Fucking Martians in this motherfucker.

Speaker: Oh, God.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Well...

Speaker: Any other questions?

Speaker: I know.

Speaker: I think we covered everything.

Speaker: I had one last thing.

Speaker: This is this photographic series.

Speaker: I hope that I have gone through this whole interview without having or this podcast without answering any of your questions.

Speaker: No, it was perfect.

Speaker: You have a series of New York City police precincts, which I absolutely love.

Speaker: Oh, why?

Speaker: Why do you love that?

Speaker: First of all, I think, I hope you were quoting Hilla and Byrne.

Speaker: The Beshers.

Speaker: Because of the matter-of-factness that you kind of present the information.

Speaker: But it's such a troubling, I mean, I grew up by precincts and just walking by them and they mean a certain thing to immigrant families, I'm sure it means different things to other people, but they're not exactly the most inviting.

Speaker: And you kind of proved that.

Speaker: You know, the next project is photographing the inside, like when you walk in like that, that should have been the project, actually, and I think about it like,

Speaker: When I was photographing the outside, I had an assistant or someone that was with me or like somebody who was just working with me for that day, like go in and tell the police that I was there photographing so that I could photograph before that they could stop me.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: But I should have been a person inside talking to, but you can't, yeah, photographing a police person is probably not the best idea.

Speaker: No, no, no.

Speaker: It was a nerve-wracking job.

Speaker: It also was one of those jobs.

Speaker: Not a job.

Speaker: It was also a job, actually.

Speaker: That was a job, too.

Speaker: So when I got that Bronx job from the Urban Omnibus, the next year they came to me and said, we want to photograph something about the police.

Speaker: I don't know what it is.

Speaker: And I was like, I would love to photograph all the police precincts.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: You know, like that would be actually very cool.

Speaker: We would like you to do that.

Speaker: But they were like, we'll give you like five, like again, $500.

Speaker: And I was like, dude, I can't do that again.

Speaker: It's not like...

Speaker: So they like, I was like, this is what it's gonna cost.

Speaker: Like it's gonna cost me like six grand or five grand or six grand to like go around, hire people for four weekends in a row to drive me.

Speaker: Cause I don't have a license cause I live in New York City.

Speaker: I have a license now, but at that point I did not drive.

Speaker: So I needed someone to drive me around to all these police precincts, like an insane person.

Speaker: And,

Speaker: They were like, yeah, cool, we'll get back to you.

Speaker: And then a year and a half later, they get back to me saying, we found the funding to get you the money to do this project.

Speaker: It was great, man.

Speaker: I was like, oh, I totally forgot about that.

Speaker: That's great, let's do it.

Speaker: So I spent May 2017 photographing every police precinct in New York City.

Speaker: I mean, you said they're uninviting, but some of the buildings are gorgeous, right?

Speaker: They are, sure.

Speaker: Four or five of them are really nice.

Speaker: Really nice.

Speaker: Modern.

Speaker: Modern?

Speaker: No.

Speaker: One's modern.

Speaker: Staten Island has the modern one, but the rest are kind of like this weird...

Speaker: Not the rest, but like about 25% of them have the same architecture and the outside has these like, it's, if you look at all the photographs from that series, you'll see that like there's this thing where if you have five windows, you have like the top of the windows have this like green awning type of deal.

Speaker: It's like a 3D but 2D kind of shit.

Speaker: A triangle and then it'll be a circle, triangle, circle, triangle, circle.

Speaker: Next floor, triangle, circle, triangle, circle.

Speaker: Like it's never the triangle, triangle, triangle, it's never circle, circle, circle, circle.

Speaker: It's all, and on every police priest it's the same.

Speaker: So I photograph like all of them and I'm like, oh, 30 of these buildings that have the same pattern of built, like same stone, same windows, same triangle circle shit.

Speaker: That's what you learn when you photograph the police precincts of New York City.

Speaker: These beautiful facts about police precincts that nobody gives a shit about.

Speaker: They all have the green lights also.

Speaker: That's the one thing.

Speaker: The green lanterns that are now probably just lights.

Speaker: You never find out what the significance of it?

Speaker: I never ask.

Speaker: I don't care.

Speaker: I don't ask cops questions.

Speaker: It's probably Illuminati with the triangles.

Speaker: Possibly.

Speaker: Don't get me in trouble with the cops.

Speaker: That being said, thank you very much.

Speaker: Thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast.

Speaker: I appreciate it.

Speaker: Thank you so much.

Speaker: I'm so, I'm glad that you have me here.

Speaker: This is great to be in this room.

Speaker: We've got the weird ceiling five, five step.

Speaker: I should photograph that.

Speaker: Actually I'll do that later.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Thanks for having me guys.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: Appreciate it.

Speaker: Thanks.

Speaker: Thanks Frank for being here with us.

Speaker: Frank, would you like to, would you like to have one shout out for the next project that you're working on?

Speaker: Oh yeah, please.

Speaker: Just put out that you want people to see really quick.

Speaker: Well, I'll be having a show in Blue Sky Gallery in Portland in two weeks.

Speaker: What's the date?

Speaker: Date will be March 1st is the opening.

Speaker: It'll be going all the way through March at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland.

Speaker: Wait, wait, wait.

Speaker: Tell us a little bit about the show.

Speaker: So it is part of the book that I published with Monolith here.

Speaker: Remember the South?

Speaker: There will be about 10 images from that, large scale and small scale.

Speaker: Like nine feet tall.

Speaker: Nine feet tall.

Speaker: 11 feet wide.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: Dang.

Speaker: So first time going that scale, but also trying to have an impact on the community there because I've heard that they need a little bit of diversity there.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: I was going to go across the New York, like the United States is photographing the problems of diversity.

Speaker: And I would tell you that Oregon has less than 5% of black people in it.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: That's because Oregon started in the most racist way ever, involving the KKK needing to go west and all sorts of other shit where they didn't allow.

Speaker: There's still some laws on the books in Oregon that are- Eastern Oregon gets fucking weird.

Speaker: That is for real.

Speaker: Oh, solution?

Speaker: There is no way, dude.

Speaker: Eastern Oregon?

Speaker: No, not doing it.

Speaker: No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker: But I lived in Portland, Oregon for three years.

Speaker: Blue Sky is a wonderful gallery.

Speaker: That's a good spot.

Speaker: That was like my home base when I was there.

Speaker: was one of my first big shows was at blue sky gallery actually with this the pictures of like the colorful like men and i was like the first time i got a solo show anywhere i think actually yeah i got rejected from them every every year god damn yeah you got to keep a wine though i i don't really take or i don't really take pictures he's gonna show himself next week yeah we're just we're just gonna have our own show here

Speaker: We're not even kidding.

Speaker: The next show here is me and him.

Speaker: Oh, that's good.

Speaker: That's good.

Speaker: I like that.

Speaker: Both photographers?

Speaker: No.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: I do things with my hands.

Speaker: Sculpture.

Speaker: Well, that's a way to put it.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: Take pictures of the things afterwards, though.

Speaker: I dig it.

Speaker: I dig it.

Speaker: But yeah, you guys are definitely welcome to come back.

Speaker: Yeah, thanks so much.

Speaker: We're right down the street.

Speaker: That's awesome.

Speaker: When you're doing another interview, we'll come and just fuck the whole thing.

Speaker: Just so I keep going.

Speaker: Just add people to the interview.

Speaker: I love this.

Speaker: Also, Frank just did a Viola Davis cover of what?

Speaker: of Architectural Digest, the Kehinde Wiley cover of what?

Speaker: No cover of that, but inside of Departures.

Speaker: Oh, Departures.

Speaker: Oh, wow.

Speaker: The most exclusive magazine in the country.

Speaker: This is Delta, right?

Speaker: Departures.

Speaker: Is that Delta?

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: No, Amex.

Speaker: Amex.

Speaker: Amex.

Speaker: Departures.

Speaker: Frank Francis.

Speaker: I'm looking to get the black card.

Speaker: Oh, my God.

Speaker: You got to get invited, right?

Speaker: You got to get invited?

Speaker: The black card seems like an endless pit of despair.

Speaker: I think that's important.

Speaker: You don't want that.

Speaker: If you're making black card money, don't have a black card.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Thank you so much.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: Arranging Tangerines is recorded, edited, and produced by Lydian Stater, an evolving curatorial platform based in New York City with a focus on the intersection of contemporary and crypto art.

Speaker: You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at Lydian Stater NYC on Instagram, and follow us at Lydian Stater on Twitter.

Speaker: If you'd like to learn more about Chris's work and Frank Francis, check out our show notes for his website and social media accounts.

Speaker: Big thanks to Tall Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.

Speaker: His albums are available at tallwan.bandcamp.com.

Speaker: And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.

Speaker: I don't know what to say.

Speaker: I just know I don't want to be like you.

Speaker: I don't know what to say.

Speaker: I just know I don't want to be like you.

Speaker: I know what to do, I know what to say.