“At my first show in Chicago, I was surrounded by all my friends. From there things sort of just took off. I started networking with other photographers and I had never done that before. Last year, I was contacted by Get This! Gallery in Atlanta; and with the “Phantasm” show, I got more into the gallery scene. It’s been cool because it’s a world I had never seen myself involved in.”

It all started one dark and stormy night, when I tumbl’d my way to Tommy Nease’s photography in an obscure corner of the internet. Several months and a Graphite launch later, we skyped from two separate ends of the East Coast on another dark and stormy night. Tommy Nease is a boy, a photographer, a dog-owner, and a dreamer. His outlook on what he does as an artist isn’t unlike what the rest of us are doing: We’re all just trying to keep sane.

GRAPHITE: It’s really nice to meet you. But who are you, Tommy Nease?

Tommy Nease: I’m from North Carolina; I was born in Maryland and grew up in Virginia. I started taking photographs because of skateboarding. I used to take photos of my friends skating and I would try to get them published in those kinds of magazines. I moved to Chicago kind of spontaneously when I was 18. I’ve been traveling around the US and to Iceland over the past 3 years. I learned a lot since then: patience, how my own mind works, how to translate that into photography. I’m about to turn 21.

What is creative expression to you?

TN: I guess it’s a way of contextualizing my subconscious. I still haven’t figured it out. A big part of it is exactly just learning what that means. I’m doing what I feel I gotta do.

Do you have process?

TN: Instead of finding scenes to photograph, I create them. It’s a long process in that I come up with the ideas first, and sketch them out; I have sketchbook, upon sketchbook, upon sketchbook of ideas… I take every photograph one by one. What ends up happening is I’ll make a bunch of images and once there are many, I’ll meditate on how certain ones could work together. My first series, “EXPLOR//ATIONS,” was a little different, because that’s when I first started to realize in what direction my photography was heading. After that things kind of fell into place by themselves.

What drives you?

TN: Lately, it’s been a lot of Appalachian folklore. I’ve gotten into Southern murder ballads and old timey music. I’ve been super into ragtime and jug band, and it’s just this weird music I’ve grown to love. On top of that, I’ve been playing the banjo for a little over a year. I was traveling through the southeast, and I was in Charleston when I met this guy named Roy Pilgrim who played fiddle. He taught me to play the banjo. At the time we were both traveling a lot. We’d roll into a town and he’d play the fiddle; within 30 minutes we’d have like thirty bucks and a place to sleep. So over the past year I’ve kind of been focused on the banjo, and I figured out my own way to play it. It’s weird because I stopped thinking about photography; I was too involved in music. Photography became a sideburner. Just now, I’ve started to refocus it back towards photography and I’ve been trying to find equilibrium.


What’s good with Appalachian folklore?

TN: There’s a lot of Scottish and Irish heritage in the southeast, so it’s driven from that. It sort of created this unique feeling in that region. From my own experiences, it’s hard to explain, but I feel a kind of pull towards these stories and murder ballads. There’s the murder ballad of Omie Wise that’s stuck out to me more than any other. The first person I heard that from was Doc Watson and he’s from Boone – where I’m staying now.

It’s weird around here because you get this feeling when you’re in the Appalachians; it’s a different kind of energy that I find really cool. These mountains are really old, much older than the Rockies. It’s the reason why I like coming back to the southeast. The locals around Georgia and North Carolina always have the best stories and the best music.

What are your thoughts on some of the ways other people have described your photos?

TN: I kind of like it. Most people tie me to the Occult and I think it’s funny. It’s interesting when people see my work completely differently than I do. If you haven’t realized it by now, I’m really bad at describing. But if anything the subconscious is a huge influence. I studied Karl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious, so I don’t want to tell people how to interpret my work. I’ve noticed for them interpretation is really based in concept, whereas for me it’s more about fantasy.

Thanks for the chat, Tommy.