About six months ago, family friend, Taschi Belt asked if I would be interested in meeting Nolan Zangas, as he was looking for a publisher for his book. I confess I didn't know of him, so I looked up Nolan's work and was super impressed. I also couldn't believe how young he was.
She made the intro and on a cold and rainy afternoon, Nolan and I met at Big Wong in Chinatown for some food. We are both a little reserved, but I thought the meeting went OK and I liked him.
Nolan explained that he'd basically designed the whole book already, and I explained the non-traditional way that Blurring Books is working with artists, and we decided to move forward together. Nolan asked for help with the cover, so I introduced him to Sammie Purulak who'd just finished laying out CRASH BANG, my own punk photos book. Sammie designed a beautiful cover for Nolan and tightened up some of the layouts for him, with the end result being one incredible book! It’s like something between an elegant but very personal photography book and a writer's black-book. In his words, "The book features about 5 years of unseen personal work, documentary/street style images of my friends and surroundings all taken in New York.”
In the months that followed, Sean & my communications would take place while Nolan was in so many different countries and time zones shooting for big-name brands. Even at the peak of my DJing career, I experienced nothing like the air miles he's clocking up & loss of sleep he's dealing with.
The extraordinary thing to me is how someone has achieved this level of success at such a young age, 25 (he looks like he’s 20 though) and not let it totally distort his ego and personality. While he does not suffer fools gladly, he’s generally chill and even very considerate. People who know me well, know I’m a stress monster, worrying about everything. As with every project, there are hiccups and fuck-ups, but Nolan never threw a hissy fit or got unreasonably annoyed.
Over the weekend he staged a pop-up exhibition at Earshot and we did the book release, & the whole thing was pretty amazing.
This experience has set a new high bar for me as far as working with artists to create these beautiful objects, known as books.
Nolan putting finishing touches to his massive wall piece.
Checking out my own recent sticker book.
Party pics.
The book
