The fact that Jeremy Kost — who has been documenting New York’s downtown scene on Polaroid film for over a decade now — is only now publishing his first monograph is a lot less surprising when you consider that he didn’t look at photography as his “career” until David LaChapelle told him that he should. As the story goes, Kost found himself sitting in a hotel room at the Four Seasons with the famed photographer and Pam Anderson (they had all been celebrating Amanda Lepore’s birthday). LaChapelle looked through some of Kost’s photos, and told him that they were really good. That’s when, as they say, a flash went off.
Beyond simply proving LaChapelle’s point, It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn , which was designed by Sam Shahid, cleverly highlights the push and pull inherent in Kost’s current body of work. On one hand, you have the spontaneity of his nightlife images, and on the other, the planning that goes into his cropped Polaroid collages, which as he points out, live as objects as opposed to photos.
“Normally, I see things as they’re happening and capture them,” Kost told us. “With the collages, I mentally build the piece in my head before I start clicking, with a careful consideration of the physical location and the subjects relationship to it. That said, a key part to the collages lies in the significance of them being made on daylight, which really highlights the ideas of transformation, identity, costume, and specifically what it means to perform when nobody is watching and or expects it!”
Click through below to preview of It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn, and if you live in New York, be sure to check out his book signing at BOOKMARC from 6:30 to 8:30pm next Tuesday night.
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
From It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn by Jeremy Kost, published by powerHouse Books
It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn Book Flip from powerHouse Books on Vimeo.