I think people like to have everything be perfectly morally clear. When the lines get blurred it worries them. I'm not worried. I don't think the men are either. But I think that the videos bring up feelings in people that they don't want to feel. Sometimes people get really mad. That's okay.
Laurel NakadateSometimes, photographs live in our hearts as unborn ghosts and we survive not because their shadows find permanence there, but because that thing that is larger than us, larger than the things we can point to, remember and claim, escorts us from dark into light.
Laurel NakadatePolaroid, you know, goes against everything that photography is now. You can't make multiples. Only one exists. I love that. By the way, while we've been talking I've now seen a total of three people I know walking on 8th street.
Laurel NakadateI present the thing we're going to do as a simple starting point. They all know it's an art piece and that it's all going to be recorded. And I have never had an experience where one of these men tried to take advantage of the situation. If they were guilty of anything it was of being lonely. It was never that they were violent or dangerous.
Laurel NakadateI believe photography is about choosing to live, being brave. Looking is an act of courage. It's terrifying. It's possible to see too much, to witness things that we cannot hold.
Laurel Nakadate