“I used less light when photographing Debbie’s closet. I was nervous because I was having a focus problem. If you put a camera in a darkened area, it doesn’t know what to focus on, so I tried different things. It’s very mysterious.”
Neke Carson
“This was taken in Baltimore. Like Brigid Berlin, John had a lot of those plastic tents that you put clothes in. He lives across the street from the high school he went to, in a house designed by a well-known local architect. It looks like a two-story house, but actually it’s a three-story. A lot of architectural tricks.”
Neke Carson
“Michael Weiner and I presented Brigid at the Gershwin Hotel Tuesday night series reading some of her work, and we became good friends,” Carson says. “She thought I was going to do straight reportage. She was so surprised—Oh my god, that came out of my closet?—and she immediately became very supportive of the project. The image is so lush, but she’s a fashion minimalist and has very few clothes.”
Neke Carson
“Edgar is an icon of the downtown New York scene, well known for his work at Lamama, and an incredible novelist and actor. To me, it looks like there’s an entity— a complete figure with a body and a head. A reminder that you’re in this person’s home. He lives in a very gothic kind of house.”
Neke Carson
“ Marisa’s an up and coming performance artist living in New York. Her closet was totally packed, so it didn’t matter if things were in focus or not. I wasn’t bothered by the focus problem because there was so much going on in the piece. Everybody sees different things.”
Neke Carson
“Gravity is making the fabric bend in certain ways, making things seems like they’re floating in water, causing the fabric to bend because it's getting too heavy and that’s why you get all that lyrical stuff. It’s very medieval, like a tapestry, but Max Blagg doesn’t dress like that. It's hard to connect this image to the way he dresses—when you meet him in a plain long sleeved shirt. “
Neke Carson
“Butterfly wings are not only fragile, they’re functional. What looks so unnecessary is really necessary. That’s what I take from Tracy’s closet. At this point, the closet portraits were still more of a concept, but the image held up.”
Neke Carson
"Somebody told me he found this pornographic. In the closet, innocent looking stuff takes on a prurient appearance."
Neke Carson
“Billy ran the Warhol Factory and took all the first pictures of the Factory, documenting the early Factory days. I’ve known him since 1967. Billy sort of protected me and helped me because I was really green at that point. You couldn’t be in the Factory unless Billy said you could be—he cut me a lot of slack.
Most people have white closets, so I have to stay away from the wall. In Billy’s closet, I no longer have this problem of the light bouncing off the white, because he painted the inside this beautiful turquoise. I could get close to the wall.”
Neke Carson
“To me, it looks like we're underground, and there’s a subterranean worm burrowing through the earth - until you see the plaid. Civilization. There’s no plaid under the earth. Well, not in its natural state.”
Neke Carson
“You think it's too revealing? I don’t mind. I like it because it’s in focus.”
Neke Carson
