I was just looking at one of your works, ‘Blue Belly’—what kind of things did you alter during the process to give it that effect? 

That was part of a landscape series I was doing. I’ve always been drawn to American landscapes, because I like the idea that all roads lead home. Basically, I was driving along the highway in Joshua Tree, and I had slide film with me, wich is colour positive. Normal film is colour negative, so when you go into the darkroom it prints positive. But I only had slide film and I was like, whatever, I’ll still shoot this, this could be interesting. I discovered this mountain of graffiti while driving along the highway, and I noticed it looked like it was mostly composed by freight train drifters, like these kids that take trains across the country. It was mostly writing, just calling out America’s problems and communicating with other drifters about local information. So that was interesting for sure, and when I took that into the darkroom I noticed while printing that the colour positive result made a lizard look like a blue belly lizard, which is an actual lizard. And then, it’s a double-sided frame so on the other side is another image—I’m actually looking at it right now, it’s on my desk—so on the back-side is another shot and the same effect happened. While I was printing it, it immediately started looking like the Led Zeppelin album cover, Houses of the Holy. I don’t know, I was cracking up, me and the other person who was printing it. So, I named that one Houses of the Holy. I was like, ‘Maybe that’s how they shot that album cover?’ I have no idea, but it’s just a cool discovery.

Are there any other rules that you learnt at college that you purposely break?

After being taught my entire college career on how to make the most impeccable, colour-correct chromogenic print, now I’m doing all things not permitted in the darkroom, like cutting pin holes out of cardboard and shining a flashlight through it for a fraction of a second. I also brought found imagery from fanzines into the darkroom and had them made into cyanotypes… I tend to romanticise the handwork, labour-intensive and traditional printing of photography.

I wanted to talk to you a bit about your portraiture, because it’s such a focal point of your work. Is there a particular portrait of yours that you feel perfectly captures the personality of the subject?

I feel like most portraits are more so a reflection of the photographer than the individual. But also, I think it really depends on the kind of photography… like, with anything that’s fashion, it’s much more aspirational and the challenge is about successfully creating this fantasy, but with photojournalism, for example; it’s more about documenting something. Back in 2018, I shot Damien Echols for New York Times, who was a part of the West Memphis Three, this group of kids who had gotten convicted in the 90’s mostly based on the fact that they were the Metallica-listening town misfits. I was excited when the Times asked me because I had just watched the HBO documentary Paradise Lost. On the day of the shoot, I arrived an hour early to do some quick location scouting and to get my bearings, and when Damien arrived, his wife pulled me aside and said, ‘We can’t shoot outside because it’s too hot out for him.’ He spent a lot of his formative years on death row, which ultimately affected the way he processes things. I ended up shooting him in a bowling alley, of all places. I found the only window in the building and had Damien sit next to it so I could get some decent light on him. The difficulty of taking his photograph I think ultimately made the portrait more interesting, because it was less editorialized.