Nate “Igor” Smith is a NYC-based photographer who mostly conducts photo shoots with porn stars and other Suicide Girls-type models. He posts lots of those results on website Driven By Boredom, which has been warehousing his images and adventures for over a decade, like this entry from 2002 via the WayBackMachine.
“Yeah, I am on vacation, its 5 AM Thanksgiving morning, I have just taken 2 sleeping pills so I can go to sleep. I just watched a Paulie Shore movie, and I am starting to hallucinate. God bless Ambien.”
The 30-something lensman started taking the website a bit more seriously in 2006 and quickly built a loyal following. Many of his fans were actively requesting to get naked for him, creating the best demographic on the planet. Over the years he has continued to amass an audience.
Recently, he decided to take some of the images he has shot and publish them in a more tactile medium, like a book, and so he cooked up the idea Dinner With Igor. It features photos of people, as the title suggests, eating dinner with Igor.
He funded the project using Kickstarter, writing: “For the better part of a decade I have photographed nearly every person I have eaten with and soon they will be in a book.”
Igor agreed to show us some photos from the book and answer our questions.
Why should anyone care about Dinner With Igor?
They probably shouldn’t. It’s just snapshots of people eating, but for some reason the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. There’s only about 75 books left, so I don’t need that many more people to give a fuck.
Is there some deep esoteric meaning you’re trying to convey with this series?
Nope.
How did you get some of the cast members from HBO show Girls to participate?
I dated one of Lena’s best friends in college and I ended up helping her with the promotion of her first movie Tiny Furniture. To say thanks she gave me tiny role on Season 1 of Girls. I got cut out but I still got $900 to say a sentence so that was nice.
What do you think makes your photography different from Last Night’s Party and other sex-girl photographers?
I just take photos of things that are in front of me. Sometimes those things are parties and sometimes those things are naked girls. I don’t really know how to answer this.
How long did it take to make the book from start to finish?
I started shooting photos of people eating in 2008 so I guess 8 years — but the process of editing, fundraising, designing and shipping took about six months.
Why did you publish a smaller publication called Food Tattoos?
I am a big supporter of crowdfunding art projects. Even if I could have paid for it myself, it’s a good way to take people through the process, find out how big your audience is, and it’s another opportunity to do press about the project. I donate to a lot of Kickstarter projects and the people who I keep supporting are the ones that go above and beyond. So when I ended up raising a lot more than I needed I wanted to give people more than they paid for. Everyone who donated ended up with a book that was about 10 pages longer than I planned, a food tattoo zine and a 5″x7″ signed print.
I actually had an idea for three food books and Food Tattoos was the smallest of the three books so I figured this would be a perfect excuse to do a zine. I actually love the way Food Tattoos turned out and it’s inspired me to do a bunch of little zines that I am working on all at once right now.
Who was the most obnoxious celebrity you ever shot?
I am pretty respectful of people so I don’t get a lot of assholes, but I do remember Bill Maher once shoved his hand in my camera at a weed convention which I thought was odd considering he talks about smoking constantly. Adam Brody once refused to make eye contact with me during a shoot I did for the Village Voice. There was something insufferable about that.
What’s the hardest part about getting a book published?
Shipping them out afterwards.
Do you ever bang any of the girls you take photos of?
It’s amazing how often I get asked this question and how many different ways I come up with not answering it.
How many requests do you get a month from girls who want you to shoot them naked?
It happens fairly often. I can’t give you a specific number.
Did it take a long time to get to that point?
I don’t really understand the question.
Out of all the girls, you’ve shot, who was your favorite and why?
I have a lot of favorites so that’s impossible to answer but I did plan a month long road trip around shooting Charlotte Stokely so I guess I will go with her. She’s fun to travel with, unreasonably pretty and incredibly easy to shoot.
(Photos: Nate “Igor” Smith)
