Excerpt from the book Jason Nocito Photography

Jason Nocito and Kelly Taxter in conversation with Kelefa Sanneh 

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Taxter: Do you think that’s a photographic truism, that a lot of photographers are obsessed with intimacy?

Nocito: I think there’s a genre of photography that was. A big part of my interest was embedding with people. The first photograph I remember really feeling something about was my best friend as a kid, in high school, on my bed, with no sheets, just passed out from a long night. It was in black-and-white. It was this really romantic, intimate moment. And I wasn’t aware of Larry Clark. I was just a kid in high school, trying to connect. I think photography got me to connect with people, in a way. I never wanted to be a “people” photographer. I thought I was going to be a still-life photographer when I was in college. I thought that was the path. Objects were interesting because I didn’t have to interact. But then I realized, later, that the only way to make money—like, I needed to make money. I tried to be a painter! I quit photo school and went to painting school for a year and was, like, “Wait a minute, there’s no money in this. I need to go back to being a photographer.”

Sanneh: Also, in the 2000s, a lot of us were paying attention to the work that you were doing of famous, cool people—Cat Power, Lil Wayne. But, Kelly, it’s probably not a coincidence that you saw something different in a photo with no people in it. Was there something distracting about the editorial work, full of cool and amazing people? And there’s something you can see when you take the cool, amazing people out of it? 

Taxter: Well, the lamp photo that I saw at Max Fish, it read as a portrait to me. It told a story in one image. There’s a way that a photograph, for whatever reason—I don’t know if it’s just for me, I don’t know if it’s the way that Jason takes photos—but you read a person, or you read an emotion, or you read a very quick jab of a story. Like, ”The lamp is pathetic.” 

Nocito: Or, “The lamp is the kid in the corner, wearing a lampshade.” 

Sanneh: We have a Jason print—a kind of self-portrait, an image of a bush that slightly resembles Jason—over our dining-room table. 

Taxter: There you go! Someone who’s very adept at capturing photographs of people, or is obsessed with intimacy, can elicit the same emotional or personality traits from an inanimate object. There’s something about photography. It’s a universal kind of human communication that can be extremely poignant. Sometimes it’s very funny, or sometimes it’s very sad or pathetic. It might be a picture of a puddle that you’ve made extremely beautiful and ridiculous. You can bring those kinds of things out of anything—if you’re very good. 

Sanneh: Is it also helpful, if an image is going to circulate in the art economy, for the image to look as if it’s not an assignment? 

Taxter: Huh. Maybe? I guess so? I don’t know. At this point in time, I feel like all bets are off a little bit.

Nocito: I kinda feel that way, too. It’s not the same thing it was twenty years ago, where you were, like, “It’s gotta be art, you have to be an artist, you have to do this thing.” That’s why I’m, like, “I’m a photographer.” Photography is kind of an art. Maybe I make art, sometimes. Maybe it’s all art when I’m dead, and you look back. But it doesn’t matter, really, at the end of the day.

Photos - Ian Kline