How did the Mo'Wax thing come about?

Oh, the Mo'Wax visual sampler. Umm...well, by the way that thing is supposed to be out before my book, before The Idealist. It was supposed to be, it probably is not going to be because they're having problems at Mo'Wax, the whole record label deal and everything. I've actually seen a proof of it already and it's really cool. It's all done, they're just waiting to ship it. I don't know what they're waiting for exactly, but the way that came up is that they did a visual sampler with some other artists, I think they've done a couple of them.

I've only seen the Mike Mills one.

Chuck D

I'd rather not mention people by name, especially if I don't have something positive to say about them. But they did come to me — well, they did my show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, they were the main sponsor, or one of the main sponsors who set up the whole thing. And they approached me at the show and were like "How would you like to do one of these visual samplers?", and you know they're such cool people, James Lavelle, Andy Holmes — I mean, they couldn't be cooler, and just really on top of it, really know their shit, and really nice people. So, of course I said yes, I'd be stoked to, but the only stipulation is, my idea is to do it in my format. Obviously we all want it to be cheap so everyone can afford it. And we want it to be something really special, at least I did 'cause I got the books out there and stuff.

The idea was to do this huge poster, cause we didn't get to do a poster, a big poster, for the show in London; they only did a small one. Originally the idea was to do like five double-sided posters and have my favorite shots from Fuck You Heroes and Fuck You, Too and just have them huge, like 40"x60", and with full color on one side and black and white on the other. And then on the tenth side we were going to do a collage of all unreleased photos, more leftovers from Fuck You Heroes and Fuck You, Too, a collage of like 60 photos, but in the end it cost way too much money to do this set of five posters. It wasn't the printing that was the problem, it was making the films that was the problem: they just cost, like, thousands of dollars.

So in the end we decided to do just one poster, printed on both sides, full color. So the one side is still the original side of that collage of sixty unreleased images, and the A side is just my favorite shots from Fuck You Heroes and Fuck You, Too, kinda like another collage on that side, and that side's horizontal while the other side's vertical, so depending on your wall space. And it's like £9.99 — well that's in England. It will probably be like $20 or $15 by the time it gets here.

So I'm pretty stoked on that, but at the same time, I wanted that out before The Idealist, because I don't want people to think I'm resting on my laurels, going back to what I'm known for. I'm just trying to clean the files, to be honest. I love doing that stuff and I never play it down, but as far as books are concerned and releasing big compilations of those types of images, I really thought that would be the end of that stuff and then work towards the stuff I'm doing now and concentrate on stuff that's more aestheticly motivated than personality motivated.

Tell me about the new book [The Idealist].

metro

The new book is basically my aesthetic, you know, that's what it's about. It's twenty years of photography by me. It's all my photography though not just the stuff that I'm known for, just stuff that I like to take pictures of. This is much more aesthetically motivated work, as opposed to personality driven work. There are pictures of individuals that you will recognize, but in those it's not the individual that is important, it's the photograph. There are no captions, the only captions that are in the book are in the back and they are absolute minimalist. They're only to let you know the year they were taken, so you can see them in context of my growth as a photographer.

I think also I really wanted to do this because I just wanted to show people what I think good photographs are. I think most photography that's out there today sucks, it's bullshit and it's wack. People take wack photos all day long, they specialize in it. People specialize in taking wack photos; I specialize in taking dope photos, and I don't know too many people who do. So, that's why I wanted to release this book and show people that's how it should be done, in my opinion. There are certainly people who shoot good images every once in a while, and some people do it more often than that, but it's pretty rare and I personally don't know them.

Some of the big photographers, whether it be fashion, skating, or music, they all do get some good shots some of the time, but they all shoot a bunch of crap too. Maybe they're like me and have a collection of all amazing beautiful photographs of other stuff they like. Maybe they know how to do it then and are just not showing the whole world, but there's no one whose work impresses me that much that I want to even look that much deeper into their whole catalog. So, I'm not really giving them the benefit of the doubt.

When I do see people, see what they do and see what they get paid, you know, the big ones and even the small ones — even the skate photographers — you see how much film they waste and how crappy the results are and how lacking of personality and composition. The images are kind of, well, not depressing, but so unfortunate and unmotivational as far as photography's concerned. I mean sometimes I'll see pictures in Slap and I'll be stoked, you know, or I'll see pictures in a music magazine and think they're pretty cool, but generally most of that shit sucks. So, I just felt like I wanted to release these images before they got too old and stale. There are images in this book from 22 years ago and there are some from like, 2 years ago. The book covers '76 to '96 and it's basically taken that much time just to put it together, and probably a big portion of it is from the later years because such a big portion of what I shot when I was younger has already been shown. But even so, you'll see pictures of trees that I took in tenth grade in this book.

Do you take pictures everyday?

The reality is, I don't shoot much. I have film in my camera, to be honest with you, that I shot when I was in Italy. That was back in July ('98) and I'm still on frame four on the roll. I've been seeing some beautiful things that I may want to take shots of. Honestly, there's this one shot I want to shoot in this pizza place I go to — by the way, I don't eat cheese on the pizza; they serve it without cheese at this particular joint. I want to shoot this one picture, but I really want to shoot it with Kodochrome 200 and right now there's Tri-X in my camera, so I haven't even shot that one picture that I've been wanting to shoot, that one moment that motivated me. I don't know when I'll finish that roll, but if I do, I do. That's all.