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 football 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?