Wes Knoll's Rite of Passage

January 19, 2024

In his debut book, Fading Smile, Wes Knoll takes us through the rabbit hole of NY adolescence, emerging bruised and bone-wearied, yet with a matured sense of fortitude. Ultimately seeking redemption, he also learns to forgive the city he once viewed with purity.

Spanning a decade, this intimate portrait guides us through an odyssey of countless adventures spawned from exploring the city’s underbelly in his relatively short life. With each image, Knoll immerses us in a community of kids whose lives and experiences are delicately and unavoidably interwoven. He illustrates a sea of emotions in this complicated tale, almost like threading a needle with barbed wire. It is as if we are plopped into the crevices of his memory. Whether Knoll left this world behind by choice or by force, his cinematic portrayal of his surroundings preserves the virtue of his experiences, difficult to prescribe sole meaning to. Understanding this world is hard unless you are part of it; by the time you realize what you’ve become, the world reappears in foggy disillusionment. Despite heartbreak and betrayal in found circumstances, Knoll beautifully transmutes the camaraderie and exhilaration of the chaos inherent in the environment that, in some way, nurtured him.

Words by Sarah Ignas
Photography by Wes Knoll

While these images expose prevalent themes of rebellion, his deep-rooted connection to the people and places he inhabits allows a blossomed sense of meaning. Instead of reveling in the past, he owns up to his faults with newfound introspection and a digested sense of his youth. Fading Smile is a love letter to the city he's always known, a place he could’ve left behind and sworn off. Instead, he preserves the past with tenderness and an understanding that although the city changes, his memories of it remain the same.

Hi Wes! Thank you so much for meeting with me today. Congrats on the release. How has 2024 been so far? Do you make resolutions?

Thank you! My new year was good. It was pretty chill. I relieved myself of the pressure to have a crazy night and celebrated with friends intimately at the house, toasted to the ball drop. I don’t really make resolutions anymore. In the past I have. A tradition of mine growing up was making a wish for the year and tying it to a balloon and letting it go into the sky.

I love that. So you grew up in New York. What is the biggest difference between the city you grew up in and the one you see now?

Yeah, born and raised. People and places have changed the most. There's less of a sense of community. The influx of people who relocated from other states has kind of eradicated the true identity of a New Yorker in their neighborhood. Besides lots of businesses falling victim to gentrification, the actual identity of a New Yorker has begun to take on a new definition, which is two-fold. I think it's a double-edged sword.

Do you think there will be a resurrection of the New York you grew up in?

I think it’s gone and it’s not coming back. I think there is this trend of New Yorkers, or people who grew up here, always talking to the younger generation saying, "It was great until the moment you got here. You just missed it." I think there is an element of everyone identifying with a late-to-the-party ethos. I do think we are moving in a different direction in terms of accessibility when it comes to living, the price of everything has become astronomical and it’s fostering less of an artistic environment for people.

Have you ever thought about moving?

I’ve thought about it, but it’s my bread and butter.

What type of person do you gravitate toward?

The freaks of nature. I think people who are unique individuals and don’t really give a fuck about what other people think about them. Also people who are just going to swim against the stream of normality and society. Whether it be their clothing or whatever they are ranting about on the street corner. Or whatever it is they choose to do with their life be it graffiti, panhandling, racking. I love to see the quirks within the human condition and give light to them, rather than step on those cracks in the sidewalk which I think a lot of people do without realizing.

Getting into the book, I was very drawn to the introduction. Can you expand on your process of writing it and what you wanted to convey?

The introduction went through countless edits to capture years of unique stories as well as personalities. More so what this unique microcosm was to me. What I wanted to convey the most was this world I found myself immersed in, was representative of what I believed to be the truth and a right of passage for many New Yorkers, as well as many teenagers in general, regardless if they grow up in a major city or not. I don’t think people realize it is super universal, in all these oddly niche experiences and personalities, we have to keep it secret because we’re young. Something I wanted to highlight was the risk factor and what these crazy characters were immersed in… to just capture that cinematic level of disbelief from the stories that make up these images.

How much of your youth informed your stylistic choices?

Pretty heavy. I saw a quote once, that you listen to the music that you love when you're 18 for the rest of your life and I find myself falling victim to that. I find myself having a foot both in the past and the present. As I get older I begin to question that. And stray while trying to find out which is the right truth to follow. In terms of inspirations, art practices, or life choices, I have a heavy sense of identity from my youth and the way that I viewed the world then with a certain purity I hope to maintain as I age.

How did you decide to arrange the photographs?

There is a narrative in terms of their sequencing. The order I was seeking was the first spread of the book: people climbing the sides of the highway to paint graffiti, following them climbing to this abandoned area, going off to explore the world, immediately getting arrested afterwards on the side of the road. Countless spread of journal entries of what's coming next. As well as what fueled and funded what came next, which is pounds and pounds of weed, ounces of coke, thousands of dollars. Then you are hit with a myriad of collages of the characters in the book who are living their lives, and exploring thematic ideas like someone who has a tattoo of loyalty across their neck; money laundering; people sticking their heads out the side of windows on road trips; girls kissing each other on prom night; or a letter I wrote when I was child after I stole something from a museum. My dad made me write a thousand times on a piece of paper: I will listen to my parents, I’m sorry for what I did. Towards the end there's a road trip chapter, I feel like once you spend enough time in New York you need to get out. There’s also a graffiti section, and one of going out to California to cop drugs and bring them back. The characters find themselves back in the city with love letters and death once again. It's an enigmatic look at that process, without revealing too much.

I love to see the quirks within the human condition and give light to them, rather than step on those cracks in the sidewalk which I think a lot of people do without realizing.

Anyone get upset about something you put in the book?

So far no or at least no one has confronted me. But there are definitely tons of things I did not include for those reasons as well. I think there is a level of intimacy that I definitely wanted to respect for certain people’s lives, narratives, and stories.

How did it feel releasing something so vulnerable?

The book has gone through so many iterations. I’ve worked on it for three years. I was really nervous leading up to the release because it has a ton of myself in it as well as other people. To me the greatest works of art are the most vulnerable, the most honest, and self-reflexive. I felt I really needed to put all of myself in it in order for it to resonate with people. So having done that and receiving such a positive embrace from friends and supporters was more than I could have ever imagined and feel grateful for.

Do you have a favorite moment in time during the book?

My favorite moment in time in the book... that's tough, but I would probably have to say either the photograph of the two girls making out, which was taken on another high school’s prom night or making it through TSA with over $50,000.00 in cash divided up between 4 carry-on pieces of luggage that we used to buy 100 pounds of weed. There's also a photo of a ripped sheet of paper from a yellow legal pad with the words “text to get sucked 578-620-1216” written in red ink which was thrown at me out of a car window one night while I was writing graffiti in Brooklyn after midnight. The other moment in time is one that is seemingly mundane, but represents the moments I cherish most from this time period: a photo of my two friends, Diego & Jesse, as we sat on this rooftop above 72nd and broadway, which became a very meaningful and symbolic place for this community of kids.

Is there anything you wish you could tell your younger self from that period of time when things were unstable?

Honestly, no. I don’t wish I had any other wisdom than I had at the time. I’d want my younger self to tell my current self to keep getting out there. Back then when I would make a decision about whether I needed to go out to document or experience or partake, I would ask myself if I would remember the evening I was engrossed in at home better than if I submit myself to the possibility of the unknown. I would turn my mind off like a light switch and that's something I would want to tell myself more today. Just go, don’t think, let my feet take me, and the rest will work out.

Do you ever wish you could go back?

I used to wish that I could go back constantly. When I left the city for college, I would listen to all the voice memos that I had recorded in attempts to transcribe dialogue and stories for the project, reliving the memories and laughing like a madman to myself. This was when the first true iteration of this project was made, back in 2017. The title I had then was "Qasim." Now I do not wish to go back, I think releasing this project has been carthartic, allowing me to understand, make sense of and close this chapter of my life — something I aimed to help other people do with their adolescence as well. A universality through the intimate.

Do you agree it’s fun until it isn’t?

No, I don’t agree that it’s fun until it isn’t. It is always fun. My mother always used to say a similar phrase in a told-you-so type of way whenever we would goof off too hard and injure ourselves growing up saying, “It's all fun and games until its not”. But, since time is non-linear, and we often fondly reminisce on moments in the past that seemed terrible, once over and behind us, they can be laughed at and reflected on with glee and acceptance. An old barber of mine from Sicily used to always say, “-but, ehhhwhaddaryougonnadoaboudit”. The best stories are always the worst ones. Sometimes we forget that until we realize it is rumination. Hindsight is 20/20.

Are there any other artistic mediums you’d like to try or are currently exploring?

I’m working on a short film featuring this lady I met on West 4th Street who's been living on the streets for quite some time now. Her name is Marianne. She has a beautiful singing voice and was a singer in her younger years. I’m looking to do more short films that are character profiles. Shining light on people who make the city run that I think don’t get a lot of shine, but who actually define the city.

What are you looking forward to in the future?

More adventures, more exploration, more stories, meeting more people and getting to understand them. I hope I can better understand myself too and help other people do the same.

Culture

The Club Is Coming to the Stage

We enter and make our way to what is approximately front left of the DJ booth, where we’re accustomed to dancing at clubs in New York. “So is this a techno club or a dance performance?” yells an uncertain participant in my boyfriend’s ear. He laughs, bouncing along to Ben UFO, and yells back, “It’s both!” The club has long been a hot topic in European contemporary dance but it is only now making its way into New York performance venues, largely through transatlantic tours. R.O.S.E. follows recent examples like Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1 (May 2024), (LA)HORDE’s Room with a View at NYU Skirball (October 2023), and Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd at BAM (October 2022).

Do these performances compromise the club’s spirit — a space idealized for its anonymity, dark lighting, and thundering music? The notion of the club as a utopian escape is admittedly just that — an ideal — because of how its intense conditions can create barriers to entry. Still, the club remains sacred for many, a place to forge connections and embrace an alternative state of being. Looking at how performances transfer this spirit to new settings reveals what aspects of the club are essential and those that aren’t.

Sharon Eyal, R.O.S.E. 2024. Photography by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.

Eyal’s dancers make their entrance. The lighting shifts from roving blue to yellow spotlights as Ben UFO’s tracks transition to more melodic beats. Clad in deconstructed lace Dior lingerie with dark red tears painted on their faces, the dancers move cautiously in a tightly maintained pack, slicing paths through the horde with hoof-like steps and jerky leg extensions. After around ten minutes of this controlled choreography, the dancers vanish as the lighting shifts back to blue and Ben UFO picks up his dubby beats. The club, as we knew it, resumes. This cycle of tightly executed movements and free-flowing club-goers repeats several times, each time emboldening the dancers to plunge further into the crowd.

Clubbing in a building once built for the U.S. Army National Guard on Manhattan’s Upper East Side turns out to be surprisingly successful — at least for the audience. What starts as an awkward, scattered group searching for their non existent seats gradually gels into an engaged, bouncing crowd that erupts in cheers each time the dancers enter and exit. Performance patrons who might never step foot in a club find themselves swept up in its potential for communion, moving in unison with fellow ticket holders. But it isn’t until the very end of R.O.S.E. that the dancers finally break free from Eyal’s choreography and join the fired-up audience in a brief moment of improvisatory movement with the music. By keeping her dancers at arm’s length, Eyal seems more interested in the club as a backdrop for her signature movement style than wholly as a space with meaningful stories to be told.

Michele Rizzo, HIGHER xtn. 2024. Photography by Cameron Kelly courtesy of MoMA PS1.

Back in May, I attended Wire Festival, a multiday electronic music event at Knockdown Center that had no shortage of organically united dancefloors. It attracted a crowd of seasoned ravers who were eager to celebrate the start of spring as they danced alongside DJs who played well into the daylight. I left Wire in an afternoon daze to see Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1. My sleepless euphoria only deepened as the performance unfolded, starting with a lone dancer who looked plucked out of the festival.

The dancer, dressed in sneakers, baggy jeans, and a tight tank top, shuffled slowly into the gallery, perfectly in sync with the looping bars of an understated electronic melody. Soon, other dancers, clad in the same staple rave uniform, joined him — each having traveled from Europe for the U.S. museum debut of HIGHER xtn., which premiered at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in 2018 and quickly became a fixture at kunsthalles and festivals across the continent. As the score’s tempo climbed, the choreography locked into a 16-count sequence, which the dancers executed with precise synchrony. They remained intensely focused, never making eye contact with each other, as they sought release in the endless repetition of synthesized beats. Once the dancers reached their limit, they stopped the sequence and exited the gallery, one by one.

HIGHER xtn. used the focused daylight of the gallery to highlight the meditative release found in the repetitive movements that dominate dark dancefloors. The performance’s restraint brought more consistency and intentionality than Eyal’s all-encompassing club construction in R.O.S.E. Yet both performances offer enticing entry points into club culture for those who may not frequent raves. Rizzo’s ecstatic, hypnotic repetitions reveal how the club can mirror other meditative practices, while Eyal’s interpolation of performance and clubbing helped hesitant audience members blossom by the end. Still, both works overlook one of the most underappreciated aspects of clubbing — its potential for individual expression. HIGHER xtn.’s pristine uniformity especially risks promoting the outdated techno trope that there’s a “right” way to dance to electronic music.

Maybe this shortcoming is, in fact, a benefit. For habitual ravers jaded by one too many sunrise sets, it’s a reminder to return to the club with more intention. If you pause and peer through the darkness, you’ll see hundreds of people moving to the same beat, each with their own subtle variations. This collective choreography is a ready-made spectacle that doesn’t need validation in a theater or museum. And when the music shifts slightly, you can watch the ripple effect sweep through the crowd while feeling the new beat in your body. Maybe this small bit of magic is best left on the dance floor.

Culture

Real Slick, Jack: Psyche Organic Arrives in New York

Shop Psyche Organic at Happier Grocery and Dimes. Coming soon to @citarellagourmetmarket @unionmarket @gourmetgarage @deciccos @fairwaymarket plus many more.

Culture

Porsche SCOPES Brings Art, Music, and Design to Toronto

The festival was a full immersion into Toronto’s dynamic creative energy. Day one set the tone with DJ collective Living Room, followed by an experimental performance by Claire Rousay that captivated the crowd. Jewelry designer Steff Eleoff unveiled her Porsche Taycan 4S art car installation—a bold fusion of automotive and wearable art inspired by her Sedona ring—while OVO Sound’s Naomi Sharon and DVSN wrapped up the night with powerful, genre-defying performances.

We witnessed SCOPES Toronto bridging underground and mainstream with day two’s lineup. DJ Korea Town Acid’s set paved the way for Angelphroot and Dameer’s debut of BASSMATI, a track blending South Asian influences with bass-driven sounds. Chippy Nonstop’s return to Toronto and Richie Hawtin’s extended set were milestones of the evening, proving that the city’s underground scene has a global resonance.

The final day featured standout performances from local pianist Harrison, Indigenous artist Tia Wood, and hip-hop visionary Sean Leon, who elevated his set with a live choir. Moonshine Collective’s film and musical performance explored themes of African utopia, showcasing art’s power to bridge culture and technology. Rising Toronto star SadBoi, who paused her tour to perform at SCOPES, further underscored the festival’s commitment to nurturing local talent.

Throughout the weekend, we experienced installations from artists like Mitsu Mitsu and culinary creations from Bar Mordecai, capturing the multifaceted creativity Porsche SCOPES brought to Toronto. This milestone 10th edition, open to all, allowed Toronto’s vibrant arts scene to thrive, underscoring SCOPES’ mission to celebrate local talent while connecting it to a global audience.

office had the chance to connect with rising star SadBoi ahead of the event. In our conversation, she shared insights into her creative journey and reflected on what performing and growing up in Toronto means to her and her work.

How are you, and where are you at right now? You told me you were traveling.

Um, I’m good, I’m feeling really good right now. I’m traveling back to Salt Lake City. I had a show yesterday in Seattle. I’m on tour right now with Coco and Claire.

How is touring life treating you? Do you like it?

I love being on the road. To be honest, I feel like I don’t know—like I’ve had good experiences and bad ones—but this time it’s really fun, especially with the people I’m surrounded by. It’s also the longest tour I’ve been on; I have about four more weeks to go. I’m trying not to think about how many days I have left.

Do you feel homesick?

Yes, because when I start thinking about how many days are left, I start to miss my dogs. I’ve just been trying to stay in the moment—I don’t even know what day of the week it is, to be honest with you.

Oh, sweet! What are your dogs’ names?

Jillian and Winston. I know, they’re crazy names.

You’ll be performing at SCOPES in Toronto, which is where you grew up. Do you feel like the crowd is different when you perform in Toronto compared to other cities?

Yes, I mean, Toronto just feels different because it’s home. Every time I come back to perform, something in my career has changed. The last time I performed in Toronto, people just wanted to have a good time, and I’m excited to perform back home again to see everyone’s reactions. I know it’s going to be different from the last time. It’s exciting to see your own growth. Toronto is a tough crowd, though. If we’re with you, we’re really with you.

So, they’re super picky? You have to gain their respect, or what is it?

I think Toronto people are in their own world, but when something really connects with them, they’ll lose themselves in the moment. But it takes something to bring them out of that. Toronto crowds are tough because even if they like you, they won’t show it outright until they’re really vibing with you.

It’s like a vibe check, right?

Exactly. They’ll enjoy your performance, but it’s hard to explain. When people visit Toronto, they often say, “Oh, you guys are so nice,” and I’m like, “I don’t think we’re that nice, we’re just polite.” Like, you can walk down the street, and no one will say anything, but it’s just our mannerisms.

You mentioned Toronto can have a moody energy, especially at night, and that the underground night scene there really inspires you. Can you talk more about what makes Toronto's nightlife so influential for you?

Absolutely, Toronto has this unique energy that comes alive at night. Similar to New York, there are the popular clubs everyone knows, but you need to find your niche—the people who know where the real parties are. I remember going to raves in high school yards, sneaking in because I wasn’t old enough. Events like Baby, Jerk!, and Yes Yes Y’all were pivotal, exposing me to DJs blending dancehall with EDM—something I hadn’t seen before. Toronto nightlife is moody and intense, but when everyone’s out, it’s like the whole city is alive.