An Interview With Jason Nocito

Jason Nocito is a photographer who shoots for a lot of fancy folks like Nike, Apple, Diesel, and Rolling Stone. A trip to his website gets you everything from pretty celebrities, to Mumbai, to the US Women's Soccer Team. It's a real smorgasbord of good photography over there. He's pretty damn big time when it comes to the world of advertising and editorial photography, but his artsy stuff isn't exactly chopped liver either. He had some stuff to say about some things.

Vice: Hi Jason. Your photo in the Still Life issue, what's going on there?
Jason Nocito: I was at my good friend Duffy's house in Vancouver and we were just hanging out. Getting high.

I assumed that was a spontaneous photo and not something that you contemplated for days beforehand. Is that how you shoot your personal photography, is it spur of the moment for the most part?
Yeah, it's usually that, but sometimes I have an idea in my head and spend time thinking about it. You know, you come across things over and over so there's that, but it's usually something personal like things that remind me of where I grew up. I'd say it's always stuff that's somewhat personal, related to my life in some way.

You put out a staggering amount of images, ranging from banal to bizarre. It's like you're bombarding us with photos and there's no way to get a handle on the subject matter or the style. Are you commenting on the huge amount of images we're exposed to with digital cameras and the internet?
I'm influenced by the way photography works with the internet. The volume of images you come across on a daily basis has kind of inspired me to do my own version of that.

Wait, your own version of the internet?
Well, I spent four years going back and forth from Vancouver to New York. I had a place out there when my wife was in nursing school so I spent a lot of time looking at the internet and photos and I would go out and shoot photos and just make things while I was out there. So that affected me, being out of New York and coming across things that I didn't see every day in New York. And, of course, I do a lot of commercial and editorial work to supplement my lifestyle.

Yes, I've noticed. You seem pretty successful in the commercial photography world. How do you balance all your commercial and editorial jobs with your personal work?
I think they're separate for me. I love photography and being a photographer--just making images for people to use for commerce, I love that. But I also try not to let it cross over into the stuff I'm doing personally. I've figured out a way to separate it and make a living with commercial photography. I don't feel like it's less important or anything, but the commercial work is so very much about the moment stylistically, and the styles tend to change. I like to create things outside of that so they're not so stylistically "of the moment," and maybe these pictures can live a longer life.

What else have you done for Vice? I remember the "Bendy" fashion shoot where you had your model contorted in every which way. Anything else?
I don't know, I can't remember! I feel like I've been in a few issues. I definitely had pictures in there when I was younger and Tim put me in there. That was the only fashion article I've done. I remember being contacted by the fashion editor and never heard back from her. She was like, "We wanna do something with you!" And then nothing happened. But I love Vice. I think it's awesome. It's really fun and does a great job of doing a lot of different things.

You mentioned Tim Barber. How did you get involved with him? I've seen your book, Loads, that he put out with you on Tiny Vices.
Tim Barber and I met in 1999. His sister was friends with a girl my roommate was going to college with and we hit it off. In 2003 I headed to Vancouver to hang out with him for a month and fell in love with that place, went back again later and fell in love with a girl out there and that was it. l had a relationship and a reason to get out of New York all the time.

Favorite photo in the issue?
I love Roe's photos, he's always great. There's a lot of great stuff in there. I like the way Vice tends to group things together that are kind of the same and there's a transition throughout the whole thing that works well. They do a pretty good job of asking questions about photography, like, "what makes a good photo at the end of the day anyways?" and "what even matters to anybody at this point?"

Been working on anything new lately?
I'm working on a body of work that is all images from Vancouver. I want to go back and shoot some more things but I've mostly been spending all summer on commercial jobs, trying to save money.

http://jasonnocito.com

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BRANDON FONVILLE