office people: Schick Toikka

You said you've been traveling a lot between LA and Paris, what have you been up to?

Efron Danzig— Just skating a lot, I was in LA, stopped in the desert where my kinda-boo lives. Then it was back & forth between Paris & New York until now. But I kind of want to move to Paris. 

I was just in Paris, but I love being in the desert in LA, it’s nice to not be in a big city. 

It's really pretty. Where he lives you have to dig a hole to shit in.

I heard that’s actually better for you. 

Yeah, honestly, it's good for your bowels. My friend actually has a little stool for his toilet so you're in a squat position and it just comes out smoother. I want to get one, but I think it'll be crazy. People would come over and be like what the fuck is in your bathroom?

It's giving grandma vibes.

Yeah, I'm not ready just yet.

What's inspiring you right now?

Over the past few days I've been watching Sandra Bernhard on The David Letterman Collection because she reminds me of my sister, but in terms of movies, Night On Earth by Jim Jarmusch is my favorite. Just the colors in that movie — everything's so pretty. I want to emulate that in my own work.

What’s your favorite Jarmusch movie if you had to pick?

Besides Night on Earth, maybe Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai with Forest Whitaker.

What do you love about his movies that other people might not notice?

Ooh, that's a hard question. I don't know what other people might not notice, but I love the lighting in those films. I like the stillness in his films. 

I can see that in your own photos.

It's super inspired by the orange and blue Tungsten light. I also like when a movie allows itself to be still.

Totally. Tell me about the subjects in your book.

They're all people I love. The original incarnation of the book featured a lot more of my friends, but I wanted it to read more like a cast of characters. Like a show where you see the same eight or nine people over and over in certain situations. I wanted people to be able to recognize the characters; if you have too many people, it gets harder to do that. I wanted to capture those in-between moments where maybe nothing even is necessarily happening.

Walk me through a regular day when you're hanging with your friends.

I love playing pool at the end of the day, sitting in a park, going to a show, riding my bike, the usual shit.

I know you’ve exhibited your photos in shows before. When did you decide to put your photos into a book as well? 

So I met Kyle who runs the publishing collective Raw Meat, at an Eight Ball zine fair and gave him my email. He hit me up a few weeks later asking to see my photos, so I sent him 50 and he asked to see more. So I sent him 600, and he told me he wanted to make a book. He's made everything easy for me in terms of the logistical aspects, and he allowed me to take my time with this project.  

I wanted the book to feel and read like a visual diary or film. I used to write a lot, but at one point, I had a knee injury, so I wasn’t skating and had a lot of time to dwell. That's when I started loving photography as a way to document my life apart from the poetry I’d write.

Poets I love always say that every aspect of their life becomes a form of poetry once they begin to describe themselves as such. Does your photography feel like an extension of your poetry? 

Once you start writing a lot of poetry, certain things people will say in conversation seem like you have to put that in a poem. It makes you see the world differently and I feel like photography does the same. It changes how you see things, which keeps it interesting for me, but I wouldn’t say it's an extension exactly. To me, they’re separate.

How do you know when you’ve taken a photo you love?

Sometimes you just feel the magic in that moment when you take it, I don’t know. I love people smoking. That's a big part of my life in a stupid way, because I've been smoking since I was young. It's a big social thing for me, so I definitely love shooting my friends at the end of the day when we're just laying in my bed smoking a spliff after a party or when they wake up.

Are there any moments in the book that come to mind as favorites?

I was sitting inside a car and my friend Kader was skitching while he was on the phone with his friend, smoking a spliff, and it just looked so insane. But honestly, my favorites are the really tender moments where my friends and I are chilling at my house or their place at the end of the day, just smoking. That’s often when I’m like, Can I take a photo of you? And that's it. Maybe I'll move the lamp a little bit closer or something, but it's that candidness I like to capture.

There's something really relatable about those moments too, because they're the ones that feel the most non-consequential, so you remember them the most. 

Yeah, I agree with that.

Are you still writing a lot of poetry?

Not as much. Photography works really well with skating because you're just out all the time, and when you're with people, you can photograph them. I was definitely writing more poetry when I was playing music; you have more time to dwell… I was drinking a lot too & that definitely helped. I’m 7 months without alcohol now though. 

Oh, so you're sober?

Yeah. Well, New York sober. Weed and other things yes, but no alcohol. A lot of my favorite poets would always go on about how they were writing when drunk, I don’t know, I would always be drunk too. As soon as I stopped drinking, I stopped writing as much poetry and I've been out skating more. I've realized that I’m not necessarily in a good place in my life when I'm writing a lot of poetry.

Would you say that poetry is a way for you to process more unsettling emotions and experiences as opposed to photography as a medium to document the world around you?

Yeah, definitely. Although I do like using photography to capture loneliness, mundanity, monotony in my life…. I do write a lot now, but it's more journalistic, very matter of fact, recording details about my day or just gratitude lists. 

It's so funny that you say that because I feel like I was always writing poetry when I was younger, but I stopped when I stopped drinking as much.

Why is that?

I don't know, but I know we’re not alone. I was reading Maya Angelou’s interview in the Paris Review that talks about how she always wrote in the same hotel room in whichever town she was in. She’d never sleep there and always wanted it to be exactly the same when she walked in. She’d arrive at 6 AM with her notebook, a pen, the Bible and a bottle of Sherry. She’d start drinking upon arrival or later around 11, and it would get her into the mood.

I don't understand that. I mean, I do understand that, I just don't know why it works that well, like I would take Adderall, buy a bottle of wine, sit at my desk and just drink, write, and smoke for hours, and hours, and hours, and now I can't do that. [Laughs]

Do you feel like your perspective of the world has changed since you've gone “New York sober”?

I'm a bit more of a grandma, and a bit more responsible. I feel like it was easier to float through my day when I was nursing a hangover half of it. Now I'm more aware, so I have to figure out what to do with all that time I was missing out on.

It's like your consciousness is numbed out until you start sobering up at 3:00 PM and then you're ready to go. Now that I'm drinking less, I'll go to a boring party and not stay until the end because I can actually see how boring it is. If you're drunk at a party, you stay a lot longer.

I know, I'll do one of these where I [stands up to emulate walking into a room, looking around and walking right out]. I've been doing that a lot recently.

[Laughs] I’ve yet to ask if you’re excited to have a book out in the world now. 

Yes, I'm so excited because it's my first one. I'm super nervous too, and kind of shy when showing my work, so it's also scary, but I'm excited for my friends to see it.

I noticed that you rarely share your photography on social media. Is that intentional?

It is intentional because, well, I don't do photography as my career. I was talking to my friend who's a career photographer and they have to post their photos in order to get work. For me, it's just fun, so I can choose to not post. And I want my work to exist in a very particular way so that audiences are only able to consume it in that likeness. I used to play in punk bands and I don't have any of that music up on the internet. We would sell tapes at our shows, and it's like, if you come to the show and buy a tape, you can listen to the music.

Everything created isn’t necessarily made for mass consumption.

Exactly, I'm not making it for hella people to see it. I'm making it for you if you care. I like the privacy of not putting stuff onto the internet, and I would definitely share less of my skating too if I didn't have to. I feel like less is more, quality over quantity.

How do you balance expressing yourself through skating with these more personal mediums like photography and poetry?

Skating, it's so different, it's like dancing. It's one of those activities where you do it and your brain shuts off until you're done, whereas photography requires me to think actively. It comes in waves. There's some weeks where I'm hitting up my friends to shoot an idea I have, or taking a lot of self portraits, and then if I'm skating or traveling, I won't take many photos for a month.

Are there any photographers you admire? 

Obviously Nan Goldin is one of my favorites. Ryan McGinley too — we use the same point and shoot. 

I love that you bring up Nan, because she's also been in movies herself.

I love Desperately Seeking Susan. I fucking love Rosanna Arquette, she's amazing and Madonna too. She still lived in the East Village back then. That era was so cool. I also love this other Susan Seidelman movie, Smithereens — I love Richard Hell.

Your photography, similar to Nan’s, reflects the community around her, in this very neighborhood as well.  How do you perceive the continuity of the intergenerational conversation between these scenes?

That's something I've always been inspired by, New York music & musicians specifically the CBGB scene. When I was a kid, my dad would play a lot of Johnny Thunders, Patti Smith, Blondie and he put me on to Richard Hell. All of those people have been in my life for so long. My dad was a musician in New York in the nineties, this kid I knows mom used to fuck Johnny Thunders. It’s funny because I feel like that scene is still very present in our world now.

It's always in the background in a way. I love when I'm at a reading and I see Patti Smith or Richard Hell randomly sitting there. I was at KGB Bar and he was there on some random night recently. 

Of course he was.

And I was like, What are you doing here?

The first place I lived in New York was next to KGB Bar. People would tell me that he goes to readings there.

How long have you been in New York now?

I lived here from zero until I was 10, and only moved back two years ago.

Have you been modeling a lot recently?

Yeah, it's been pretty good. I love that shit, it's so fun to be fab, you know?

[Laughs] I feel you. How does modeling bleed into your perspective behind the lens?

Besides the technical aspects, through doing all of these shoots you learn that when you're with a good photographer, they go out of their way to make you feel comfortable. I appreciate that and I want to make anyone that I shoot feel comfortable too. It's really reflected in the photo if someone is comfortable or not, you can really tell.

It's funny how body language can be captured in a photo; you can actually read it similar to actually being there in the moment.

I do a photo project with this guy every two weeks where I go to his studio and he takes a portrait of me on a four by five cam. He's like a mentor, where I'll bring in my photos and ask him, which one do I use for this? What do you think about this photo? He will say things that really make me think about the story a photograph is telling.

How do you get someone comfortable when you’re shooting something more stylized?

If it's a setting up an idea I have, I'll get them a beer. Or, cigarettes if they smoke. [Lights a cigarette]. 

Could I actually bum one from you?

Of course. 

The place around the corner wasn’t selling any.

This is the $6 pack from the place down the street. Redact this because it's lowkey, but it's exactly where you think it'd be. [Redacted]. It's a little stand with this old lady, it's awesome.

That's fire. Nobody needs to know.

It's the spot. She's the best.

What was your process for choosing the spreads and the way you placed images together?

Honestly, when I was making the layout with Kyle, we just went off feeling. We didn't overthink anything. We were just like, Oh, that feels like it should be there and this feels like it should be there. We mostly just placed images where we thought they should be.

Do you feel that if you were to release a second book, you'd continue with this diary format?

I definitely like the diary format because it feels comfortable for me, though I also have other little photo projects that I want to work on. I used to take the Megabus every weekend when I was living in Philly, so I started taking a lot of photos of Uber Eats drivers and people in the bike lane. I used to be an Uber Eats biker, I would wait for the bus and take photos of dudes in business suits on their little one wheelers. I want to make a little zine of silly shit like that, but separate from the diary project.