The abundance of film and digital-based photographers has grown significantly over the past five years. With the likes of Instagram, people can now use the quickness of digital to document their lives. But film-photography allows individuals to have a warmth and intimacy that maybe digital cannot always provide. And for one VCU grad-turned-pro, these candid shots stand out enough to be collected in a book. But he needs your help.
The abundance of film and digital-based photographers has grown significantly over the past five years. With the likes of Instagram, people can now use the quickness of digital to document their lives. But film-photography allows individuals to have a warmth and intimacy that maybe digital cannot always provide. And for one VCU grad-turned-pro, these candid shots stand out enough to be collected in a book. But he needs your help.
Nate Smith, who goes by the nickname Igor (more about that here) and runs the photo blog Driven By Boredom, made his way into photography during high school as a way to kill time.
“I was in high school and basically needed to take an art credit,” Smith said. “My mom was a photographer, so I had her camera. It just seemed like a thing to do.”
Smith initially never saw photography as a career. He attended VCU as a Photography major for a while as a way to “go to school for something fun” and devote his time to other projects and activities, including managing local band The Gaskets.
But Smith was stuck in the transition between film and digital photography in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, having embraced the digital world while VCU had not. Although he enjoys working with both film and digital forms, he found the latter to be more interesting at the time.
“Even though I shoot a ton of film now and I’ve shot film up the whole way,” Smith said. “I was shooting when digital wasn’t quite good enough.”
To define Smith’s photography is to see an inside view of various subcultures across America. His work contains little studio photography, instead focuses on spur-of-the-moment interactions with a slew of individuals, ranging from porn stars to juggalos and just about everything in between.
“I hate shooting the same thing over and over again,” Smith said.
The shots have a casual feel to them, but the pictures are anything but, and people have been taking notice. Smith’s work has been featured in Vice and other online publications, and although other articles and write ups tend to focus on his photos of porn stars, he said this stems from his interests in subcultures at large.
“I feel like I do too much of it,” Smith said in reference to his photos of those in the adult film industry. “But part of the naked women thing is that I enjoy the subculture of porn and I enjoy [other subcultures].”
When Smith moved from Richmond to New York City in 2006, the EDM scene was beginning to get underway. In a time before the Skrillexes and Bassnectars, the genre was still relatively underground in the United States, giving Smith a first-hand glimpse into what was to come.
Although he is not a fan of the genre, Smith took advantage of the opportunity and documented the energy built round the genre and the clubs that played EDM.
“Even though I didn’t like the music, I thought the stuff that was happening at those parties was pretty interesting,” he said.
This ability to step out of his zone of interest is what sets Smith apart from his photography counterparts. He takes small moments and creates big pictures for his viewers and admirers.
“The [things] I’m into [are] very different from the stuff I photograph,” Smith said. “I feel like I can fit into a lot of different things without being a full on part of that scene.”
Although there is an emphasis on subcultures in his work, Smith excels in other situations. His upcoming book, Dinner with Igor, is a collection of photos, as the title implies, of people eating at different restaurants with Smith.
As with his previous work, the individuals represent a wide spectrum of society. The book initially started as a New Years Resolution in 2008, when Smith started to document his life with a point-and-shoot 35mm camera. While dining with porn stars Dana DeArmond and Bobbi Starr in celebration of DeArmond’s birthday, Smith took a photo of the two of them eating, a photo he initially thought little of.
“It was just sort of like a throwaway shot,” Smith said. “It wasn’t really a photo I was thinking about using for anything.”
But the photo interested him. There’s not so much a rawness to it as there is an intimacy. You feel as if you’re sitting right across them. This, among other photos, became the inspiration for the Dinner with Igor collection on his Driven By Boredom blog.
Although there is now a significant amount of people taking pictures with 35mm film, Smith believes there is a reason for that.
“The point-and-shoots that shoot film are so much nicer than the digital ones, especially at that time,” he said. “The quality of film is never gonna change.”
In addition to the quality that film provides, Smith said that without his knowledge and education in photography, he wouldn’t be able to capture the images he has thus far. “I like it because it makes you think about film differently,” he said. “I think that I couldn’t shoot what I shoot without having shot thousands and thousands with a… proper camera.”
And then there’s the food aspect to the photos. Eating isn’t the most beautiful process. It’s generally a messy affair that requires one to focus on several things at once. This is, in part, why Smith enjoys throwing food into the equation, but it’s not always real food itself that sparks his interests.
“I like food photography,” Smith said. “Not like photos of food; I like adding food to photos. It’s a weird obsession I have with food that isn’t food, just fiberglass food.”
In terms of upcoming projects, Smith hopes to release a collection of his juggalo photography, working with Richmond artist Jenn Rockwell, who painted some of these juggalo photographs.
To help fund Dinner with Igor, Smith has set up a Kickstarter in order to offset the expenses of getting the book published and printed.
While it appears that he has met his goal, Smith’s received a call from his printer and was then quoted “nearly double what [his] last book cost,” putting the price around three thousand dollars.
“The book will get done,” Smith said. “But the margins will be a lot lower and I might lose a lot of money.”
The Kickstarter serves as a pre-order for Dinner with Igor, with twenty dollars or more getting you a copy of the book. This is the second book Smith has crowdfunded. His first book, Get Your Kicks, photos taken during his trip traveling on Route 66, sold out in a month.
“I’m a big proponent of crowdfunding,” Smith said. “It’s a good way to spread the word about the project you’re doing.”
