Daniel Arnold’s New Pleasure? Missing the Shot.
November 11, 2025 at 03:30PMI’ve been enjoying Aperture recently, working my way through the eminent photography magazine’s recent issues on Black style and Seoul. But Freddy Martinez’s interview with Daniel Arnold caught me off-guard for its collaborative brilliance. Arnold dances a bit with his interlocutor, sharpening Martinez’s inquiries in an affectionate two-step, then gamely explores his own psyche. The result? A roving conversation about vulnerability and insecurity, changing interests, Arnold’s “Jekyll-and-Hyde” relationship with his editor brain, and how an artist honors his impulses by staying open.
Martinez: You said that the guiding light of finding photographs that “double as a proof of magic” no longer compels you. What is guiding you right now?
Arnold: That statement comes across more definitive than I meant it. Do you know Wings of Desire? That film’s depiction of magic—the angel with a notepad noticing when the wind blows up someone’s jacket or when someone is crying alone in a parking lot—that breeze that blows through your life is still a guiding light. I mean, if not guiding, at least one of the great pleasures.
Martinez: The writer Denis Johnson would describe it as seeing mystery wink at us. Photographers are pointing at something and saying, “Look this way. I want you to see this.”
Arnold: I think that’s the structure of the game. Any game you play by yourself, exhaustively, every day of your life, you get to have an impish relationship with it. Now, I take great pleasure in missing a great picture. Like if I had taken one big step to the right and lifted the camera a little higher, you would see that there was this great thing happening, but I shoot from the wrong spot, so it’s loaded with dramatic irony that only I feel. It’s like a puzzle box. There’s some pleasure in that, dumb pleasure probably. But how do I keep the game entertaining for myself? I mean, there’s still that very basic caveman thing, “Oh, look at that. That’s funny. That makes me sad.”
For better or for worse, I’ve tried to make myself a world where I can work without the disruptive noise of my brain, one in which I can be a servant of my instincts, and then I can bring intention and analysis back to work at night in the edit. I’ve talked for a long time about a Jekyll and Hyde relationship with the editor within me, and I stand by it. The guy who’s deciding what the pictures are is different than the guy who’s taking them.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/11/11/daniel-arnold-photographer-interview/
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