Interview: Nate Palmer
By Lia J. Latty
Published November 15, 2022
Did you always know you wanted to be a creative and a photographer?
NATE: Yeah. I went back and forth for a long time, but when I was a little kid, I wanted to be an artist. When I was four or five, six years old, I always told people I wanted to be an artist when I grew up, but then I wanted to be a firefighter. I eventually came back to art. I started taking photographs when I was probably about 12 or 13, and from there I just had a little point and shoot that I used to take pictures of my friends and family. I was lucky to go to a high school where we had a darkroom and film processing equipment. I was also really lucky to have a Black photography teacher in high school. That was definitely somebody that I could look up to, someone that I could see myself in and someone that I felt I could really learn from. That was the beginning of photography for me. I think it was a mix of that interest in the arts already being there and the other part of it was luck in the way that I found photography.
What inspirations influence your work?
NATE: The photographers that I look up to are Dawoud Bey, Deana Lawson, and Paul Demato. I really love the way that he captures light and expression, as well as how he poses people. I take a lot of inspiration from things that I see in nature, from light to silence. There’s a bunch of photographers that are in the field right now that I really admire and I look at their work, and I’m like, “Damn that’s nice, that’s cool. I see what you did”. I take things from here and there and I’ll add stuff to it.
What is your process like when you’re working with the people you photograph?
NATE: Normally it depends. If it’s something that I’m hired to do, in that case I normally like to spend a little bit of time with somebody, just talking if we have enough time. My goal, every single time, is to have the person feel as comfortable as possible, because you can really tell in the final product. You can tell when the person feels comfortable or when they don’t feel comfortable, so that’s always priority number one. It rarely happens where you take photos and off the bat you have something that you can use or something that you like. Normally, whether I’m shooting film or digital, the first two rolls or however many photos you shoot on digital, I just expect those to be thrown in the trash. You have to start photographing and get people comfortable where they are in the space that they’re in before you really start to get something. I’ll have ’em sit down, and we talk about things unrelated to photography. I’ll give small gestures. I normally don’t do any crazy posing and stuff like that in my work, so I’ll just give them small things to do; light changes of expression or think of this, think of that, do a fake laugh. A lot of times you tell people to fake laugh, they end up really laughing, so that kind of stuck. It’s really just about warming people up and making sure that they feel comfortable because, aside from getting a good photograph, you want it to be a good experience as well, you wanna have fun. You’re both creating something together. It’s more than, of course, just getting someone’s photo. It’s about this relationship no matter how short or how long it lasts.
How do you navigate the world of contemporary photography?
NATE: I don’t take it too seriously, that’s my number one thing. When I was first coming into this industry, I was like, “Wow, this person’s doing that, how do I get there? Here’s my game plan to get to this finish line.” First of all, there’s no finish line. Second of all, there are a lot of people, like in any field that you’re in, that take themselves very seriously that might come with a lot of success. That can be a great thing. For me personally, it doesn’t make me happy. I don’t have fun when I really feel like I’m competing. I want to be able to make work that I love to make and see where it goes, see where it takes me. I feel like I could end up doing a different career and have photography on the side and still be just as happy, as long as I’m shooting. So, I try not to take it too seriously. I try not to take my work too seriously or anybody else’s work too seriously. A lot of work is meaningful. A lot of work is really beautiful, and I think that is as far as I let it go.
How do you define your relationship with photography?
NATE: It’s a love-hate relationship. Well, I’m not gonna say it’s a love-hate relationship, it’s a love-dislike relationship. I would never hate photography, but you know, with anything that you spend a long time building, that you spend a long time putting a lot of energy, time, and money into, it can become burdensome. To me, it’s a mixed relationship because it can be such a release creating work, especially with your hands. There’s a real sense of freedom, like you are contributing to the world in a way, and it feels good to be recognized for that, but at the same time it’s like a kid that you now are responsible for. It can be a lot. For example, a project that I’m working on is ongoing. I love making the work, I love seeing the work when it’s done, but there’s all this space in between that I think a lot of different artists will feel. It’s this thing that you’re just carrying on your back until it’s done, and for any artist, it’s never really done. I don’t know, it could just be me. I don’t wanna speak for all artists, but it definitely is this thing that I feel like I’m carrying on my back a lot of the time, but at the same time, the freedom that it gives me is not something that I think I could find in a lot of other places. I think it’s something that I’m really fortunate to have in my life. I don’t know if a lot of people have something that they can rely on for that sort of feeling.
“I want to be able to make work that I love to make and see where it goes, see where it takes me. I feel like I could end up doing a different career and have photography on the side and still be just as happy, as long as I’m shooting.“
Why did you decide to focus on masculinity within your work? How do you see yourself pushing that concept further?
NATE: That was something that I just started thinking about over time. It wasn’t something that I went into my practice in photography thinking, “I want to make work about masculinity.” I’ve been creating work, and I kind of started thinking about it, having discussions about this and realizing that it was reflected in my work. There’s a conditioning that men, generally, are brought up with in this country, and that is to be strong, to be resilient. Don’t express your emotions. Be completely self sufficient. All these things that are not realistic. They’re just not human. That conditioning is something that I think is a real disservice, not just to men, but to everybody. It affects every part of society in a different way. I think as anybody gets older, you start to realize different things about yourself and about life. I think just having those discussions about this really allowed me to think about masculinity in a different way, and to think about how it’s affected my life, this concept that we carry around with us. It allowed me to find a real freedom in expressing myself in a way that is not traditionally understood as “masculine”. That is where that comes from.
I really want to be able to show different sides of men in this country, anybody identifying as a man. That is a sense of sensitivity, vulnerability, and all these different things that are not really seen as masculine. Once you start talking to people, it’s not that hard to get them to feel comfortable enough to show that part of themselves, I think for me, honestly. I photograph Black men most of the time. In the Black community, where it’s rooted in the history of this country, Black men did not have the police to protect them or their families post slavery. They could not rely on anybody else. As men in general have traditionally been seen as the protectors of the family, a lot of the time they were literally the only thing standing between their family that they love and whatever danger was out there. That has built up generational trauma. You do that over and over and over again and it creates this hardened shell that people carry with them throughout their lives and then pass on. Now, I feel like it’s a time where Black men are starting to have the freedom to be like, “Okay, where did this come from and how can I start to let go of that?” I feel like that is kind of where I’ve landed with some of this work, just exploring and deconstructing.
There’s a high level of humanity that shines through from the men in your photographs. What have their reactions been to seeing themselves through your perspective?
NATE: Normally it’s a positive reaction. It’s honestly mixed sometimes because of that weighted idea of masculinity. I honestly don’t look for that super masculine side of people. I’m trying to dissolve that and deconstruct that, so sometimes it’s mixed, honestly. Sometimes people express that they don’t like being shown in that way, which is fair, but a lot of the time it’s positive and I think people do have an understanding, especially when we have these kinds of discussions. There’s an understanding that there’s a need for this kind of imagery, to show different sides of people in this country.
What do you hope people take away from your imagery?
NATE: This is something that I probably struggle with a little bit. I love photography. I love what it can do, but I really wanna make work that is touching people in their souls and I don’t always feel like photography is the best way to do that, but it’s the tool that I have been given to do that. That’s what I want to do. There are some art forms, particularly moving imagery where I feel like I’m really touched in my soul by this work, music as well can do the same thing. I don’t know what people’s reactions to my work are now, but that’s what I hope to do. Otherwise, I want to represent Black people in a way that they love and that they appreciate and that they’re proud of. It’s only recently that we’ve really been able to begin to do that. I think my work is also documentary focused, so I also want to change the way that people think about things, change the view that they have on life in this country, or whatever it may be.