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Capturing Bright Nights: An Interview With Tod Seelie

Burning car outside of my apartment, Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2007.

Burning car outside of my apartment, Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2007.

After years of photographing the more intriguing, freakier, and sometimes darker side of New York, photographer Tod Seelie has collected his images in the recently released “Bright Nights.” It’s a collection of images that are either at extreme odds — like the NYPD using a chainsaw to remove a bicycle from a pole on one page, and on the opposite page a mass of bike riders blurring across the Brooklyn Bridge — or sadly harmonious, like two side-by-side images of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in Breezy Point. Whether in tandem or in opposition, Seelie’s work is always raw and authentic, even if Seelie offers up little insight himself. In “Bright Nights,” he instead invites various creatives to describe the surreal events captured in his photos or reminisce on the time they were taken. Below Tod Seelie explains his work in his own words, his influences, and shares some more on the world he’s captured and experienced in his travels.

In the book, there’s an image that stood out to me as the most unforgettable. It’s the picture of the girl getting eaten out by a guy in — is that in an alley?

That was in the back corner of a warehouse, yeah. Almost an alley.

I mean, I heard that all these pictures are people you know and your friends but that just seemed so intimate… how did you get that?

I was at a party at the Chicken Hut. They threw a party on the ground floor of their building, which they don’t normally have access to. It was a dream team lineup: Japanther, Cerebral Ballzy, and Big Freedia. It was mobbed, there were shit tons of people there. It was a windowless warehouse. There was this whole section with no lights — you could not see your hand in front of your face. It was where everyone was going to do all their drugs. I was over there just kind of hanging out and I heard a noise. I just took my camera out because I realized oh there’s some people on the ground and I couldn’t tell what was going on. I held my camera and just hit the shutter and that was the shot. When I looked at it I was like, whoa [laughter].

Nathan climbing the ladder to a rooftop water tower, Chelsea, Manhattan, 2013.

Nathan climbing the ladder to a rooftop water tower, Chelsea, Manhattan, 2013.

From checking out your site and seeing landscape pictures and you being from Ohio and taking more landscape stuff there, are you planning to shoot more landscape while on your book tour? Or are you going to just shoot whenever you feel like it?

Yeah I’ll probably just shoot whatever I come across. The thing I’ve found when you’re traveling under your own volition is that it requires a lot more planning, whereas when I’m on tour with a band, they’re determining where I’m going, what I’m doing — therefore what I’m seeing. But when I’m on my own I’m starting to realize that I have to make a plan, and when I make a plan it’s great ’cause I’ll usually find stuff I love, but when I don’t make a plan you could just end up on highways and gas stations and you’re just like, Well, that was boring.

So, I definitely hope to, but I’m also not entirely sure how it’s going to work out. And I’m doing it in different segments: I’m doing the northern east coast in November, the southern east coast in December and January and then waiting the winter to cross the US and do the west coast.

The raft Alice rounding the southern tip of Manhattan, 2008.

The raft Alice rounding the southern tip of Manhattan, 2008.

Speaking of traveling, what’s the place that’s exceeded your expectations?

That’s a really tough question. There are so many options.

Top five?

I’m trying to think of the one that blows my mind the most. There was one town on the Northern coast of Italy that we stopped at when we were doing the raft trip from Slovenia to Venice. And I had actually traveled the entire route and back in a tiny, little bathtub-sized plastic boat, scouting the route for the rest of the trip because we didn’t really know the area. Junk rafts aren’t the easiest things to tool around on sometimes. There was this one area where there was this port town right exactly where we would want to land for the night. It was super ritzy and rich and I got stared at hard just getting out of the boat, and it quickly seemed like it probably wouldn’t work out well, because there was going to be 30 of us. People were really unfriendly, not even interested in hearing what I had to say, no one was interested in helping.

Eventually, there was this one dude who was a valet or a concierge in a hotel and he waved me over and was like, “I think I understand your situation. Do not come here. You wanna go to this fishing town that’s off the coast and inland a little bit. There are a lot bays and marshes. That’s where you wanna go.” Literally based on that and nothing else, I got back in the boat and went on. The thing went like four miles an hour, so I took another three to four hours to get to this other town, and it was an amazingly picturesque, cute little fishing town. The inlet to the town was a big canal lined with fishing boats because that’s what everyone did there. I talked to some people there and they were a little confused, “What are you talking about? Junk rafts? I don’t understand this.” But it seemed like a relatively friendly town. When I went back that became one of the places where we had to deviate from our course. And when we got there, it was amazing.

The whole town came out. Everyone was laughing and hanging out. We were so inspired by the welcome that we threw together an impromptu performance because everyone kind of expected that, because we looked like a traveling circus. Everyone made shit up on the fly. We had a few professional clowns with us, which was very helpful. People were just bringing us all this homemade wine from their basements, and little old ladies would show up with giant metal pots of stew. We couldn’t understand anything of what they were saying, or what was in the stew.

But that was an exception in Italy. Most people were borderline afraid of us, or not friendly. And we found out later that there’s a stereotype, essentially, called punkabbestia, which means “beast punk.” It’s the Italian version of the oogle traveler punk. Meaning, the shady kid who’s gonna steal shit and might stab you and probably has a scary dog. Apparently they have a big problem with that there. I guess it’s also that some people think of gypsies, which is a similar thing. Even though we rolled up on these crazy, colorful, ramshackle sculpture rafts, a lot of people still thought, Punkabbestia — stay away from them! It would have helped if we’d understood that in the beginning, because we were like, Why is everyone afraid of us – we’re nice! We just don’t speak Italian… So that town made a huge impression on us. It was really great. But I also just spent a month in Nebraska, and that place was really nice, which I never really thought I’d say [laughter]. The farm I was staying on was really cool and had a lot to do with why I enjoyed my time there. I kind of like that you just never know where you’ll have a great time.

On Sucka Pants you share pictures but you also share a bunch of mp3s of a pretty good variety of music. With the book release party you had a bunch of bands play live — sort of unusual for a book release. How does music inspire you or play into your photography? Because to me, it’s kind of like you’re creating a mixtape on your blog, which I think is pretty cool.

Well, it kind of factors in in multiple ways. I’m not sure where to start. I’ve always been really into music, from when I was younger, and so that’s just been a big part of what I’ve done, where I’ve gone, who I’ve gotten to know, all those things. So it’s just been a huge part of my life in general. It’s become a big part of what I’m shooting. But there’s the aspect of being friends with these people and I really like their bands. I go on tour with them to be a roadie and sell merch, take photos, and because of these tours I end up in this place, at this time. So I take that photo.

My work in general was expanded by a lot of the traveling I did with the various bands I went on tour with. For a long time music photography was a huge part of what I was shooting. I was really motivated to do that, for various reasons. One being it’s really exciting to shoot bands, especially really exciting bands. It’s challenging, so it never gets boring. A lot of times I’m either a fan of the band or friends with them, so I want to support them, make them look good, put their name out there, do what I can with the tools I have to help them.

And then on a certain level you spend enough time with musicians and touring that it just becomes a part of your normal life. Shooting your normal life involves shooting your friends and bands. It’s very cross-pollinating.

The mp3 thing was a combination of, again, wanting to promote bands. When I first started posting stuff on the Internet, in like 2003, that was about the same time when the very first mp3 blogs were popping up, and that was the coolest thing on the Internet for me! I could just go to these blogs and hear all these bands I’d never heard of, music from different cultures and different genres, all sorts of stuff. You didn’t have to go to the record store. You didn’t go have to go through all of this stuff to find tons of new music. Eventually, I decided I wanted to contribute. I realized a lot of music I was finding was great, but there was a lot of music I enjoyed that wasn’t out there. I wanted to throw my two cents in. I never took it seriously. I was literally posting my mixtapes that were like “This Is What I’m Listening to Today,” but at the same time I was trying to contribute what I could.

Costumed racer at the Idiotarod shopping cart race, Manhattan, 2006.

Costumed racer at the Idiotarod shopping cart race, Manhattan, 2006.

Cool. So another picture that really stood out to me from the book is the one of the Virgin Mary statue from the Breezy Point fires. How do you take a picture like that without making it look like disaster porn? How do you approach that kind of thing? Or even with a lot of photographs in the book, like the kid holding up the money – that could easily make him look kind of like a caricature. But none of these feel that way to me.

I guess my approach to those sort of issues is in my intention. When I take a photo, I make sure I have an intention that I’m okay with. In the case of the kid with the money, I didn’t even know that was gonna happen. I was in a really dark basement party in Harlem. I was more looking and watching for people who were dancing, and someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around not sure what to expect. It was a slightly tense situation because not only was I not friends with the people there – I just knew one or two people – but I was this guy with this big camera. You’re gonna stand out. It was just this kid with his friends who were lurking there, and he taps me and does this pose and holds up all this money, clearly saying, Take a photo of me. So that was it. There was almost no communication other than that. From those photos you maybe forget about some and wait around and come across one and think, Well, that’s very interesting. ‘Cause in the dark I couldn’t even tell how much money he was holding up. I didn’t know until later when I looked at it.

In the case of disaster porn or ruin porn, something a lot of people have strong opinions about, it’s the same sort of thing, it’s the intention. These situations, whether they be abandoned buildings or disasters, I find them compelling because they’re unique. You’re not going to see that unless you’re there. Whether it’s an abandoned building or the devastation of a fire. In the case of Breezy Point, I got there as fast as I could the next day. I was kind of just wandering around looking to see if anyone needed help, taking the whole thing in. But I’m also a photographer, and when I came across that scene I was like holy shit!

I heard there was a fire in Breezy Point, but I didn’t understand the scale. I hadn’t fully grasped it. So when I saw that, I thought people need to see this, people don’t know. There were literally still smoldering flames over there, and so I shot those photos. The reason why the photo is in the book is because it’s a really unique, compelling image. I don’t feel that most people flip past and think whatever. It grabs your attention. That’s half of making it worth it. The other half is what is this, what am I looking at? And if you don’t know, there are captions in the back that will tell you that it’s some of the destruction post-Sandy.

I’ve lived in the city 16 years now, I think, and with a few exceptions (9/11), there haven’t been that many crazy disasters that devastate chunks of the city. I feel like that’s a very bizarre and unique moment and a piece of New York. I think for a lot of people that were here through Sandy, the iconic images remind them that it was really bad but we made it out.

So who or what are your influences?

That’s always a tough one because there’s a lot.

Well, you were mentioning my landscape photography earlier, so I have people that have heavily influenced me in that aesthetic and interest. William Eggleston is a pretty obvious one when you look at that work. Todd Hido is also a heavy influence on that.

But then, on the other side, with the stuff that’s in “Bright Nights,” even from the beginning when I was putting together a book pitch, I was talking to someone about it and mentioned it was kind of like Nan Goldin’s “Ballad of Sexual Dependency.” I feel like that is a book I’ve had in the back of my mind the entire time I’ve been making this book because I feel it was so successful in a lot of ways that I also wanted to try and be successful in. Showing your personal life but in a way that’s interesting and compelling, not leaving a lot of explanation and just having the images speak for themselves. There’s also the correlation people have made that she was showing photographs of her and her friends over a certain period of time and that’s also what I’m doing but with a different aspect of life. Hers is super personal, mine is much less so. I don’t appear in the book. If someone gave me a black eye, I didn’t include it. It’s a different approach, but definitely very heavily intertwined.

View of Manhattan from the top of the Williamsburg Bridge, 2011.

View of Manhattan from the top of the Williamsburg Bridge, 2011.

You’ve said that when you first moved here, you couldn’t take pictures because you had to adjust to the landscape. Does that still happen to you when you’re traveling even though you’ve already traveled so much?

No. I think it’s just the combination of two things. One is that I wasn’t interested in trying to change or adapt to New York when I moved here. I was working really hard on this road trip, William Eggleston aesthetic, which doesn’t really work here. And I didn’t have the time or ability or maybe the open-mindedness to say Okay, that’s not going to work here. What else might work here? I feel like I don’t have that attitude in general anymore, but also when you travel somewhere, where you’re not moving there permanently, you hopefully are going to be more open-minded already because you think I’m on a trip. Here’s a new place. That’s partially why I went to Nebraska, because I don’t know what it’s like there, I’d never been, and that was enough to get me to go there for a month and try to visually figure out what I liked about where I was or what I had to say about the things around me.

So what’s your favorite place in Brooklyn or New York?

Favorite for what reason?

To be alone? In New York, I like feel everyone is a little speck because there are so many people and you’re always alone in a way, but where do you go to when you actually need to be alone?

I have a lot of places for that. A lot of times if I have a job that takes me to a certain part of the city, and there’s a neighborhood near by that I really like wandering around in, I’ll get off work at like midnight or one and just walk around for a couple of hours before I go home because I want to utilize the fact that I’m close by and have some time there. Because it’s hard to just drop what you’re doing and go to a place, so I just try to slip it in while I’m doing other stuff. But yeah, everywhere from weird parts of Midtown, Chinatown, Far Rockaway. I used to really love Coney Island.

Yeah, that’s my spot.

It used to be by far my favorite, but I have to admit they’ve kind of really taken a lot of the character out of it. A plastic boardwalk is not a wooden boardwalk, guys. Although I understand the reasons for all of it.

I want to be able to fall through the boardwalk [laughter].

I want to be able to go under the boardwalk! So, admittedly, I don’t go there as much as I used to, but so much of it is still there that I really do enjoy. But there used to be this whole row of junk shops for like, a block. I used to find the weirdest, coolest shit there. I had no money but I would be like, Okay, I’m not going to eat tomorrow, but I’m going to totally get the weird old thing with the dust on it [laughter]. Yeah, I used to really love that place.

That’s the thing though, you kind of need the same approach to parts of New York that you do when you go to another country. Coney Island isn’t what it was but you still need to stay open-minded and enjoy what is there and what there is to like. The boardwalk’s still really sad, but…. I feel like in a city that’s changing as rapidly as this is – and, admittedly, not in architectural ways I enjoy – you have to get better at focusing on what there is to like.

Porkchop straddling the third rails, Staten Island, 2004.

Porkchop straddling the third rails, Staten Island, 2004.

So what advice do you have for someone who’s just picked up a camera, not necessarily someone who’s a young photographer?

Well, from a very traditional standpoint, the more you shoot the better you get. But you should also look at what you shoot and compare it to what you remember seeing when you were shooting. If you just shoot and compile it and never really examine it, it’s not going to help you learn. So, shoot a ton, but look at what you shoot, and remember what it was like to see that so you learn how to translate it. I think that’s the trick to getting better at shooting. Period. Then you start to recognize your own vision and style, and then also learn how that translates.

You’ll get to a point where you can say beforehand, “that’s an amazing photo” or “that’s NOT an amazing photo.” In the beginning, you’ll be shooting hundreds and hundreds of photos but eventually you won’t because you won’t need to. I don’t know another way to get better other than that.

Cool. That’s like the same advice for writing. Just write.

I know some people that just shoot a ton and never look back, and you’re not helping yourself to get better. It’s like reading questions but not answering them almost. What good is that? It’s really “no duh” advice, but I think it’s the most helpful to understand.

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portrait of Tod Seelie in his backyard by Cheryl Georgette Arent

Tod Seelie

Interview by Alex Martinez
Tod Seelie photo by Cheryl Georgette Arent
Purchase “Bright Nights” here.



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