Photographer Leander Capuozzo Doesn’t Buy Into the Nostalgia of Relying on Old Technology To Make New Work

AGE: 29
BASED IN: New York 
NOMINATED BY: Richard Kern 

I’m looking for decisive moments (Henri Cartier-Bresson reference here). Obviously, what that looks like in today's world has changed. People are now shielded behind layers of self-awareness using irony and detachments to protect themselves from constantly being imaged and recorded, maybe by a ring camera, an iPhone, a gotcha moment is always seconds away.

When I take pictures of people, there is a sort of agreement between me and the subject to take some of these protective layers away and allow a different type of moment to happen. You have the marks that technology leaves on images. This is something like a fingerprint that marks your position in time in a pretty inescapable way, which I think is very cool.

I am very wary of using older technology when making images. I want to remove nostalgia from the equation as much as possible. I believe it clouds judgment and is a pretty basic experience to provide and actually gets in the way 90 percent of the time. I’m looking for something that's less guarded. I hope to learn something about how identity and self is constructed and maintained.