Through this period, he\u2019s come to view his practice in a very different light, as evidenced by his second monograph, You Are What You Do, which arrives courtesy of Loose Joints. Interestingly, it spans the same decade as his punchy 2022 debut Pickpocket, which was charged with an energised kind of momentum and sleaze. Yet this new book reveals a different side to the photographer \u2013 one that\u2019s more sombre, introspective, and closely aligned with how he views his work today.<\/p>\n
Arnold appears on screen from his New York apartment, which he has just returned to after a funeral. The gravel-voiced artist answers each question with a considered depth, despite being visibly drained after the weekend he has had. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to tell anybody that it\u2019s been an insane decade of upheaval,\u201d he says, when asked about the tonal shift in the book. \u201cA lot changed in my way of working around Covid and the explosive moment around George Floyd\u2019s death. It felt overwhelmingly despicable, off and wrong in that moment to use Instagram or to use photography as a means of self-promotion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
At this time, Arnold\u2019s relationship to social media also began to sour, and now he shares his work online far less frequently. \u201cInstagram was incredibly world shifting,\u201d he says. \u201cI probably wouldn\u2019t be speaking to you without it. But once it had worked for me, I immediately started pushing it away. To be very candid, I have enough followers that it would be a crazy act of self-mutilation to kill it. God knows someday I might need to press a button and talk to 400,000 people. But I think that every day that has passed, I get a little bit less comfortable with it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not doing crazy, uncanny, city surrealism. This is a different side of me \u2026 It reveals a more sentimental, beauty minded, grieving point of view\u201d \u2013 Daniel Arnold<\/p>\n Simmering in the intense shifting states of America and losses in his personal life, Arnold met with Loose Joints founders Sarah Chaplin Espenon and Lewis Chaplin, handing over a vast edit of his work to the Marseille-based publishers. \u201cWhen I first started talking to them, I made it clear that things had changed,\u201d he explains. \u201cI wasn\u2019t interested in doing \u2018funny Daniel\u2019. We are not doing crazy, uncanny, city surrealism. This is a different side of me through the same period of time. It reveals a more sentimental, beauty minded, grieving point of view, I think.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Sequenced without any text or dates, the resulting book drifts through a spectral mix of beauty, humour and unease. There are smile-rousing scenes \u2013 a child nestled in his father\u2019s lap, a couple kissing in a hydrant spray of water, a woman inhaling a bunch of flowers \u2013 alongside images that capture a more disquieting mood, such as a sea of phones raised toward something unseen and a toddler clutching a sign asking, \u201cDoes life have a purpose?\u201d. Interspersed are Arnold\u2019s brushes with fame, from Kim Kardashian at the Met Gala to the late Angus Cloud lighting a cigarette on the street. The result is a portrait of New York that is unmistakably the artist\u2019s own, yet tempered by a sense of distance, yearning, and reflection brought about by the passage of time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some of the most affecting images are those that balance several feelings at once, such as a strange mix of tenderness and danger in one shot of a smiling dad and his young son peering through the viewfinder of a gun. \u201cI\u2019ve shown that picture in public and people are always outraged,\u201d he says. \u201cThe truth of that picture is, we\u2019re on vacation and my incredibly fun, great father of a brother is holding a BB gun and he\u2019s playing with his kids. There\u2019s no danger. There\u2019s no violence. But represented in that image is a truth that in every carefree, beautiful moment, there is potential for subversion and horror.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>
![\"You](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/466697.jpeg\")
\u00a9 Daniel Arnold 2025. Courtesy of Loose Joints<\/p>\n
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\u00a9 Daniel Arnold 2025. Courtesy of Loose Joints<\/p>\n