CRACKING UP
AS MUCH AS NINA LOVES HER NIKON LENSES, SHE’S NOT AVERSE TO MAKING SOME DRASTIC ACTION FOR THE SAKE OF HER ART…
I did one project on this former reform school in Florida and I had three 35mm f/1.4 lenses, which are very beautiful, and I thought that I didn’t need three, so I took one of them and I started to smash it with a screwdriver.
What?!
It wasn’t easy to do, but it was an interesting feeling to do that – I cracked it and I used that lens to take pictures for most of that story. It was very interesting, the effect, it’s very subtle. It took down some of the colour, you got a little flare in places you didn’t expect. Most people wouldn’t notice it, but it’s there.
How dangerous do you think it is on the streets now?
I have a daughter who is very frightened for me to go outside – she sees videos of the NYPD assaulting women. If you look at who police target, it’s often women, and I’ve been targeted at demonstrations, so she’s really frightened for me to go outside and has said things like, “who will feed me and give me hugs and kisses?” So, I’m treading kind of lightly. It’s hard, there’s a part of me that’s saying, “yeah, I want to run with them all night long,” but I’ve also photographed 10, 15 actions after police murders, but this one is different. Much more numbers, much more rage.
Much more rage, even a week after George Floyd’s death… More people have been killed in the aftermath of the event, so there’s been a lack of leadership on the side of local officials to say, “this is our plan moving forward, this is how we’re going to reform our police departments.” In New York City, this discussion has not happened. My heart is in this city and I feel sad for people who have to face this constant humiliation by the police.
If my partner was a black man, or if I was a black woman who had a black son, I would be terrified every single moment of every day when that person walked onto the streets of New York, because of the police. And that’s an impossible situation. That is the truth.
How do you choose a story? Some are obvious, but what about the other stories that no-one else knows about – that you feel need to be shown?
Yeah, it’s a very important question and I feel any answer I give is going to sound incomplete. It’s a combination of timing and where my heart is, at the moment…
How much of it is instinctive?
It’s hard to know what will possess you because, ultimately, if you’re going to work on something for a while it has to obsess and possess you, right? And that’s different from me photographing a couple of weeks on Covid, I’m not going to continue with that in any shape or form for the next five years. So, it’s something that fits in with my general political being, which is looking at situations where power presents itself as both attractive and insidious. I’m interested in that and how, for some people, it’s debilitating, while for others it presents an opportunity.
Such as?
Like this fracking story I did. I spent five years on fracking, I’m still on this story. Here comes a whole industry that’s created such a perfect, rosy narrative: “You’re going to give us a bit of your land, it’s going to be good for you, it’s going to be good for the country, because we won’t have to do these stupid wars anymore and we will be energy independent, and it’s clean.” It’s like a perfect story, but it’s a lie. Within all of that, what can I do visually as a pure photographer that’s interesting, that’s beautiful, that’s weird, that’s evocative and provocative? Then I have my own obsession of looking at the US military because, frankly, I’m offended that I live in a country where half of the wealth goes into the war machine. I feel that I, as a citizen, should look at that, and few photographers do, few journalists do. I’m still on that story.
What can I do visually that’s interesting, that’s beautiful, that’s weird, that’s evocative and provocative?