Photography has always been a great love of mine. I stood on O’Connell Street bridge years ago, with friends holding each ankle,trying to capture a rapidly-setting smudge of sun over the spires of a dull, charcoal-sketched Dublin. I loved walking around with my old SLR Minolta snapping bits of graffiti, odd sights, small moments and cherished ephemera.
How does your work at Self-Titled influence your visual output?
Since I was young I’ve always sorta thought musicians were the coolest people in the world. And I think a lot of what gets lost in the over-blogged coverage of music these days is any sense of the artists behind the music being legitimately cool anymore—at least a sense of cool that’s actually captured and conveyed through the coverage, if that makes sense.
Who are you favorite photographers?
Cass Bird, Ellen Von Unwerth, Tim Barber, Guy Aroch, Ruvan.
How much is a relationship with your subjects important to you? I especially like your shots of Bootsy Collins & Kareem Abdul Jabbar at Bonnaroo.
Every photographer will tell you this is one of the most important elements to a good shoot. It just makes sense. If a subject feels comfortable around you, your photos will be better. My Bonnaroo photos are a weird example here. Most of the work we did in Tennessee for the festival was done very quickly and within a five-minute block of time while an artist was en route to another obligation or about to head onstage. Getting subjects comfortable was something that had to happen almost instantaneously.

What do you think of the resurgence of interest in celluloid photography?
It’s great that people love shooting on film. Whatever you feel most comfortable with taking photos is awesome. I shoot pretty much entirely digital–probably 90 percent. And I prefer it.
Another photographer I hire for work in self-titled is Caroline Mort, who shoots a very unstudied amateurish style of photography, quite often with disposables, that has such incredible heart and emotion to it. Pretty much every issue, my favorite photo is one of her shots. Again, I’ve always felt that film, especially the way I’ve been able to approach it since my darkroom days and compared to shooting whatever-mega-megapixels of a digital camera, is somewhat of an imprecise medium, and there’s this awesome charm to a photographer being OK with and having confidence in an image’s imperfections. Cass Bird is probably the best at this. Her Urban Outfitters catalogs lately and her T magazine stories… incredible.
Who would you like to photograph that you haven’t yet? Why?
Elle Fanning. My goal for 2012 is to become best friends with her. So my thinking is that if I somehow get to photograph her, I can spark our long friendship and then we can hang out all the time and watch Netflix and eat pizza and stuff. That’s not weird, right?