You Are What You Do

Loose Joints is proud to present You Are What You Do, a monograph by Daniel Arnold — one of New York’s most renowned and obsessive modern street photographers. Over the past fifteen years, Arnold has become a cult figure in the city’s visual culture, known for his raw, humanistic encounters with its citizens and for collaborations spanning from the Safdie brothers to the Met Gala and beyond.

Rooted in a well-trodden lineage of New York street photography, Arnold’s work channels the chaos, chutzpah, humour and vitality that define the city, yet You Are What You Do reveals something more: a tenderness and empathy that courses through every frame. There are genuine moments of sadness and grief mixed with joy, alongside spontaneous, unscripted scenes of pure street cinema, blended with candid images from fashion shoots and film sets, all sitting effortlessly within Arnold’s generous visual language.

Working from a vast archive, this generous landscape-format monograph distills Arnold’s signature wry, tragicomic style into a spacious and classical book object. From the glamorous heights of high culture to the downtrodden and overlooked, You Are What You Do draws a wide, empathetic circle around New York’s characters and charm.