ZXND.R Artist Spotlight
Photo taken by @Zxnd.r
What is your home city?
Who Are You?
New York City.
There isn’t a question that I ask myself more than this one and yet its answer eludes me. In search of it, I became an artist. It all began with photography and the way it asked me to engage with the world. It has since expanded to a wider variety of mediums, but pictures remain a staple in my search for identity.
What is a memory attached to one of the images shared?
After a wild game of cat and mouse we were eventually cornered in the lobby and delivered to the precinct. We spent the entire night and most of the next day in a cell, inventing games and cracking jokes. We looked like we were having such a good time that multiple officers felt the need to lecture us on the “remorse” we should be feeling for “what we had done”. Upon release we were informed of our “fame” and the group of large news sources that had posted stories of the “daredevils” hanging over the edges of a building owned by our president (at the time). Despite the obvious discomforts and anxieties of a situation like this, they end up being the stories that fully encapsulate the soul of exploring.
What’s in your bag?
This is constantly changing for me. These days I try to use a variety of cameras and find originality in differentiating my equipment to those around me. If I were to make a hypothetical bag I could count on if I had no clue what I would be getting into, it would look something like:
-Canon 5D Mark iii, 24-70mm, 70-200mm
-Nikon F3, 50mm, Any film 400 speed
or higher
-Mefoto Backpacker Tripod
Did photography lead you to exploring or vice versa?
Why do you explore?
Exploring is what made my life feel interesting enough to document in the first place, it is my core inspiration for becoming a photographer.
Before exploring I was just a kid who let an army of fears dictate his life. There was something about the fruits of exploring that outweighed everything I was previously afraid of. Running toward this new terror, protected by the awe of it all, exploring became a way of pushing myself. Overcoming something so primal gave me a feeling of control I had never experienced before. It is in this “overcoming” that informs the way I live the rest of life. Any incoming challenge can be treated just like the first edge I ever hung my feet off.
Can’t hurt to just peak over it, right?