, I have a problem most photographers would love to have. For about a decade I shot New York nightlife as NickyDigital, close to six nights a week. A few years ago an archivist friend (thanks Brian!) helped me pull every hard drive and burned CD into one place. He asked how many photos I had. I guessed 500,000.
While working on the project, we found I was off, by approximately … 1 million photos.
At 10 seconds a photo, 8 hours a day, that's 521 days. No weekends off, and all you've done is look. I wanted to make a book. I froze instead.
So I stopped looking and started asking
I could some code in the early 2000s. I can't anymore. But I can describe what I want, and AI writes the script.
Find every photo of someone holding a PBR can. Every flip phone. Every Sidekick. Every person holding their own camera on the dance floor.
Each of those is now its own gallery. I didn't sort a single one by hand.
What the software didn't do
It didn't pick the show.
This Friday I'm opening Face to Flash: twelve portraits from eight nights in the fall of 2006, chosen from 5,737. I got down to 23 fast. Getting to twelve was the hard part.
The script can find the PBR cans. At the moment, It still can't tell me why two emo kids hiding behind them at an indie dance party says something about that year. That was on me to decide.
In a recent interview , I very specifically chose to call Generative AI a camera on purpose. I use it like a tool, like Photoshop, like the digital camera that got me into those rooms in 2005. Some (MOST photographers are angry with me for using it. I understand why … I really do, because I’ve felt that despair before. The despair where you thought you had your career path sorted, but then someone drops an unexpected global change in the way media is created and enjoyed and it’s on you to figure out how to keep on keeping on … all that to say, I still think the eye and ability to communicate is the job.
Watch the conversation
I talked through all of this with Roxy Cottontail on her podcast, Roxy's Tales. The AI part starts around the 40-minute mark. The rest is an hour on how nightlife worked before the iPhone.
One thing I learned posting the archive: a photo from 2006 gets about 20 times the response of one from 2017. People in their twenties miss a year they never saw.
Come see the twelve
Face to Flash: NickyDigital, Fall 2006
Presented by the Museum of TEENY Art, which Molly Kraus and I founded.
Where: Here BK, 26 Bushwick Avenue, Brooklyn
Opening and NickyDigital Reunion: Friday, November 13, 7 to 10pm
On view: through December 1
At the party: an OutSnapped photo booth, DJs from the old parties, and a drink-and-shot special at the 2006 price of $6
Take one home: miniature prints from the museum's vending machine, $2 in quarters
RSVP here. Then come find me by the machine.