An Interview with Vito Fun

Every few weeks (or less) we get an email from Vito Fun that's chock full of random photos. He's one of our most frequent photo blog contributors, and the stuff he sends us runs the gamut from pictures of nice old people on the street to aesthetically pleasing apartment buildings to hammered college girls flashing their tits.

Vito is today's featured photographer, and we had a chat with him about his pictures and how he got started with Vice.

Vice: Is Vito Fun your real name?
Vito Fun: Well, Fun's my middle name, and I have a keychain that says, “Fun is my middle name.” I had it changed when I was 21. I guess I was just crazy and rambunctious back then and thought that was the best idea in the world, but now it's strictly professional.

You had your middle name legally changed to "fun"?
Yeah, my girlfriend asked me the same question five minutes after I met her, and it turns out her sister had her middle name changed to "Nipple Tweaker." So we instantly bonded. Also, my old roommate changed his middle name to "The Best," so he's Dave The Best.

That's fantastic. Your photos are an assortment of thought out, planned photo shoots that are often bizarre, like the one with old men dressed up like Easter egg baskets, and random people on the street type stuff. Do you like one of those styles more than the other?
I like them both. I like to be able to take a snapshot and not think about it, but I’ve been doing that for so long now. The thought out stuff is good because I have so many weird ideas, and my girlfriend and I have been doing stuff together a lot lately and it's been working out really well. We have such amazing resources and we’ve been calling on all of our friends and contacts and putting together the weirdest shit we can.

Have you ever had people get pissed at you when you photograph them on the street?
Oh yeah. I was getting in people’s faces for years. That’s how I developed my relationship with Vice. My friend and I walked around for years with film cameras back in the day and would just get in people’s faces. People are used to that kind of thing now, but in the film days people weren’t so used to aggressive photographers. And no one had cameras with them all time, so people would always get mad--I've been punched a few times.

That's how you got started with Vice?
Yeah, I just sent a big stack of photos to Gavin and Jesse, and the next time I looked at a Vice magazine, like, literally 75% of the dos and don'ts were mine. And then they called me in and we had a little chat, and that’s how I developed the relationship.

Do you shoot a lot of still lifes?
Oh yeah, it took me like five hours to go through the archives I have of still lifes. I pulled like several hundred and sent them all to Vice and I wasn’t sure how many they were going to run, and then I saw the issue and I was like, "What, one? I pulled out hundreds of amazing gems for you."

But everyone only got one! Why do you think we picked the dog in the trash can out of all of your "gems"?
Well, they said they were debating over that one and another one I had of a drug dealer's house party. There was a whole table with a spread of drugs on top--bags of coke, bags of crystal, a mountain of ecstasy, and a mountain of katamine. You could do whatever you wanted and take whatever you wanted. I guess there was another similar picture though, so that’s why the dog in the trash got used.

Where did you find that trash dog?
It was actually on my corner. We had a front yard in Brooklyn and we always had a little mascot there. Just something that we knew the neighborhood kids would vandalize sooner or later and steal in the middle of the night. But that dog, which I got in Atlantic City, just sat there for like months getting more and more disgusting and drenched, and then one day I got really drunk and just ripped it open. It was a total fucking disaster--it made such a mess because it was stuffed with Styrofoam balls, so I just threw it in the trash. It was adorable because it took up the whole trash can.

You sent us some photos a few weeks ago that were just pictures of junk. Then for the photo issue you've got that dog in the trash. Do you take a lot of photos of garbage?
I'm sort of an obsessive compulsive person, documenter, and photographer. So there are some things that I always have to take photos of, and if I find interesting trash then I always want to take a picture of it.

I take a lot of pictures of used condoms I see on the street.
Oh yeah, every photographer has their thing.

Do you have a favorite photo that you’ve shot for Vice?
Hmm, good question. No, I just always have a current favorite at the moment.

Do you have a favorite photo from the Still Lifes issue?
Damn, it was so good--I just opened it this morning. I really like the one with the TV and the air conditioner next to each other. That one is so ridiculous. Only a select group of people would actually find that funny, and I find it really funny.

Oh yeah, the Ari Marcopoulos one, right?
Yeah, that photo is the reason that people would hate Vice magazine. They’d pick up the magazine and say, “Why the fuck does this get one whole page?” But that’s why it’s so brilliant, because this fucking picture deserves a whole page. The reason people hate and love Vice at the same time is that picture, and I love that picture. I think it’s brilliant.

JONATHAN SMITH