All images © Daniel Arnold 2025 courtesy Loose Joints
Daniel Arnold’s career as a street photographer began simply with him seeking the psychological benefits of walking for eight hours every day, alone with his own thoughts. Over time, making photographs became proof of presence, a way to trace the emotional exchange happening on the street that he would attempt to decode later. 15 years on, he is now a cult figure in the city’s visual culture. Upon the release of his latest book, “You Are What You Do,” he tells Gem Fletcher about his deep relationship with New York, how street photography is changing and his vision for the next chapter.
“You Are What You Do,” published by Loose Joints, is available to buy here.
“The lore used to mean so much to me,” Daniel Arnold tells me over the phone when I ask him about his relationship to the mythology of New York. “But at some point, the city started having a relationship with me, and that connection keeps getting deeper and deeper.” Arnold’s work channels the uncanny chaos, humor and vitality that define New York City, seen through the lives of its residents. He chases unscripted scenes of pure street theater, collecting genuine emotional moments that chart the gamut between joy and sadness. On one level, the result is a visual stream of consciousness, an opportunity to stop and notice the nuances of life that we often overlook in our daily rush. Perhaps more potent is street photography’s ability to offer a mirror to humanity—to simultaneously recognise our insignificance, while metabolizing our role as a collective.
In his latest book, “You Are What You Do,” published by Loose Joints, Arnold reflects on the first chapter of his career, tracing how the impact of everything from the ubiquity of smartphones to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped the city and its people. In gathering events over time—gestures, coincidences, collisions and signals—the archive speaks to larger socio-political shifts, making visible an intricate web of relationships and causality. When I ask Arnold what it feels like to be making work amidst the current turbulence in American society, he replies, “We are witnessing something very consequential. And yet, my eye is more caught by the fact that there is just an astonishing level of successful manufactured distraction. As someone who produces evidence of behaviour—it’s indisputable and it feels like we desperately need to be more tuned in.”
At some point, the city started having a relationship with me, and that connection keeps getting deeper and deeper.
By its nature, street photography like Arnold’s demands patience, endurance and commitment.
It requires both a deftness of looking and a resilient nervous system that can confidently anticipate a yet-to-be-seen sequence of events, even if they may not occur. In truth, walking around the city on some days is fruitful, while on others it reaps no rewards, which is why the endeavour has always been rooted in more than just image-making for Arnold. “At the beginning, it was just a coping mechanism—a depression release valve, and over time I became addicted to the process,” he shares. “I know it’s ridiculous, but I struggle to think of myself as a photographer in the general connotation of the word, as it doesn’t feel like the defining part of what I do. I never expected anything of it. It’s all genuinely rooted in humility and curiosity. My [success] happened by accident, and despite it, I still operate like there is no comfortable resting place.”
There is just an astonishing level of successful manufactured distraction… it’s indisputable and it feels like we desperately need to be more tuned in.
Unlike many of his peers and predecessors, Arnold isn’t interested in confrontation. He doesn’t attempt to actively influence the scenes he encounters, recognizing the complex politics that surround the genre. “There is a rap, machismo energy and a lot of bravado in this crowded field,” he shares. “There is potentially something very creepy-seeming about street photography.” Much of this tension is born from the anonymity between image maker and subject, and even though Arnold is a quiet observer, he doesn’t want people to know that he’s taking their photograph. He spends a lot of time pretending he’s not taking pictures, looking the other way, or shooting from the belly, embracing the reality that some images fail or an interesting mistake could unexpectedly happen. And yet, the pressure of working with strangers is not something he takes lightly.
As Arnold explains, “I do think there is a right way to do street photography. I think that the only way to do it right is also to do it wrong. It’s a constant learning curve. For me, the only way to do it is to be in constant conversation with my personal morality—my neurotic Midwestern self policing mission to do no harm—and hold myself accountable. At the end of every day, you have proof of what you did, and you’re going to remember how it felt to do it. It kills me to think that I would impose on anybody, and there are times when I have to work against that and times when it works against me.”
Arnold's work, and subsequent success, ignited an explosive rise in street photographers. In contrast to his early days, when he rarely crossed paths with other photographers, there is now an abundance of competition. “I operate more and more in a hall of mirrors. When I spend time on Instagram, I end up laughing as we are all covering the same ground,” explains Arnold. “There will be something that I felt was my accomplishment of the week, and then I see two other people shot the same thing. It’s a humble reminder that no matter how smart or special you think you are, there is a nonstop barrage of evidence to the contrary. It is almost impossible, especially in this algorithmized world, to really do something that is yours. So I’ve decided what’s interesting is to commit to something bigger.”
I don’t want to defang it completely,” he says as we come to the end of our conversation. “But so much of this is guttural—it’s all reflex.
In many ways, “You Are What You Do” marks the closing of a chapter and the beginning of a new journey for Arnold. His reaction to recognition, and to the hall of mirrors he finds himself in, is to move in a different direction. “In the sweep of the world falling apart during Covid, and deaths in my family, I also fell in love,” he says. “There was a major tone shift in my life. I began working more intensely than I had ever worked before, but there was this simultaneous phenomenon that the interesting work became the work at home.”
While the actual value of street photography may be impossible to assess until decades after it’s made, Arnold is set on finding stories adequate to our contemporary reality, to uncover beauty in complexity and celebrate indirection. “I don’t want to defang it completely,” he says as we come to the end of our conversation. “But so much of this is guttural—it’s all reflex.”