Daniel Arnold’s New Pleasure? Missing the Shot.

I’ve been enjoying Aperture recently, working my way through the eminent photography magazine’s recent issues on Black style and Seoul. But Freddy Martinez’s interview with Daniel Arnold caught me off-guard for its collaborative brilliance. Arnold dances a bit with his interlocutor, sharpening Martinez’s inquiries in an affectionate two-step, then gamely explores his own psyche. The result? A roving conversation about vulnerability and insecurity, changing interests, Arnold’s “Jekyll-and-Hyde” relationship with his editor brain, and how an artist honors his impulses by staying open.

Martinez: You said that the guiding light of finding photographs that “double as a proof of magic” no longer compels you. What is guiding you right now?

Arnold: That statement comes across more definitive than I meant it. Do you know Wings of Desire? That film’s depiction of magic—the angel with a notepad noticing when the wind blows up someone’s jacket or when someone is crying alone in a parking lot—that breeze that blows through your life is still a guiding light. I mean, if not guiding, at least one of the great pleasures.

Martinez: The writer Denis Johnson would describe it as seeing mystery wink at us. Photographers are pointing at something and saying, “Look this way. I want you to see this.”

Arnold: I think that’s the structure of the game. Any game you play by yourself, exhaustively, every day of your life, you get to have an impish relationship with it. Now, I take great pleasure in missing a great picture. Like if I had taken one big step to the right and lifted the camera a little higher, you would see that there was this great thing happening, but I shoot from the wrong spot, so it’s loaded with dramatic irony that only I feel. It’s like a puzzle box. There’s some pleasure in that, dumb pleasure probably. But how do I keep the game entertaining for myself? I mean, there’s still that very basic caveman thing, “Oh, look at that. That’s funny. That makes me sad.”

For better or for worse, I’ve tried to make myself a world where I can work without the disruptive noise of my brain, one in which I can be a servant of my instincts, and then I can bring intention and analysis back to work at night in the edit. I’ve talked for a long time about a Jekyll and Hyde relationship with the editor within me, and I stand by it. The guy who’s deciding what the pictures are is different than the guy who’s taking them.