Alain Levitt On New Book, ‘New York: 2000-2005’

Images by Alain Levitt courtesy of Alain levitt.

Early-2000s New York was a golden era.  

There seemed to be some sort of magic in the air. A creative hub where everyone from all walks of life came together, to hang out, to party, to make art and just have fun. A few months ago, my Instagram started getting flooded with these incredible party photos from that time with everyone from Jason Dill to Kim Gordon all hanging out. I wanted to know more about them, quickly I found out those were all the photos of Alain Levitt, and they were being resurfaced in the lead up to his debut photobook, New York: 2000-2005.

The book is a five-hundred-photo visual chronicle of that golden era in New York City, and it is now available through FA Books. It features photographs from inside the walls of Max Fish to on the city streets with the IRAK crew to Tompkins with Mark Gonzales and Jason Dill. I caught up with Alain to talk about the project and the time the book captures. The nostalgia is heavy with this one. 

Hey Alain, thanks again for doing this. What are you up to?

I’m digging in my 4x6s again getting photos ready for this LA show I am having. My kids are home for spring break, and they are running around with their friends.

Are you putting up different photos in the LA show to the New York show?

Yeah mostly. There may be some crossover with some of the 4x6s, but I think only one of the larger images will be in the next show and there are twenty large images.

Damn, that’s awesome. Are all the 4x6s your original ones from the early 2000s?

Yes, they shouldn’t be, but they are [laughs]. We rushed to do the shows, I probably should’ve made copies but there just wasn’t time. We were editing to the day of the show.

How long were you working on the book for?

It started about three years ago. During covid I got all these photos out of storage, and started going through them, then I started posting these photos on Instagram. I got such a good response straight away; I was surprised. Then my friend Teddy and a few other friends reached out to me telling me to do the book and everything just fell in place.

At what point was it when you were like ‘Okay, we need to do the book’?

I am not a person who is ever like I am going to this, someone else has to tell me what to do. When Teddy first came up to me about it, I was pretty into the idea. Teddy was in IRAK, he’s not a graffiti writer but was there for all the mayhem, much more so than I was. I hung out but I went home. Most nights I would work until four and that was pretty much my cut-off, there was a whole group of people who would stay up all night, but I was not one of them. Teddy was very quickly like to me ‘We need to do this before someone else lays claim to this era. This is our story; we need to do this. It should be us who tell it.’ There were a few other people who I talked to about it but the two people who couldn’t have been more suited were Tim Barber and Jesse Pearson. They were planning on starting an imprint called Apology. Jesse was the editor of Vice when I worked there, and Tim was the photo editor. Having Teddy, Jesse and Tim involved it only made sense. Those guys got everything out of my hands and made the whole book. Tim made the whole book with his sister.

Did you just hand them your whole archive and let them go through it or did you select the photos you wanted and gave them those?

I took out around a third, things that are complete garbage because I have a bunch of photos that are garbage in the 4x6s. Then the photos of people who I know wouldn’t appreciate me showing their photos and some people who had told me so. I removed all those and then with what was left it I let them do whatever they wanted with it.

How many photos are in the book?

Five hundred.

How many photos do you think you went through?

Around 2000. Actually, maybe it has to be more than that because there’s no way that I got 500 out of 2000, my batting average can’t be that good [laughs].

The cover of the book is the toilet at The Hole. Why is that the photo you guys chose for the cover?

You know what, that was all of us. We made an initial selection of ten or fifteen photos that could’ve been the cover but that was the one that we all agreed on.

Why specifically that one?

The Hole was really important to all of us. That was where I kind of found my place in New York. It was a place that was there for all of us. It was completely wild and completely free, basically you could do anything and if you were a friend of ours, you could even do more. When we saw that photo, it just seemed right, all the other ones seemed like a photobook and this one didn’t feel like a photobook, and it is more like a grimy New York piece.

Did you want it to be more of a documentation of the time rather than a photo book?

You know, I didn’t have anything in mind, Tim did. I always tell people now that if I had made the book, it would be me trying to show off in a way, showing who I knew, my best photos and where I was. Tim just made a book where he was just trying to represent the time and I think it is a much better book because he did that. Even he was showing me all the images at first and I was kind of a bit embarrassed because they all aren’t good photos, but it is about the collection and the feeling you get from it. He did a great job of showing what I experienced at the height of my day-to-day and the joy I got being in this city with all the amazing people around me. 

Yeah, the book paints a visual picture of New York City during the early 2000s, could you verbally paint a picture of your life in the city during that era?

I walked around taking pictures all day. I did party photography and I had a bar job. The bars I was working at weren’t corporate bars, they were fun, wild bars so I could always have my camera and always take pictures. I would walk around and take pictures, see friends and take pictures.

The scene at that time was full of so many creative people there were artists, actors, musicians, writers, photographers, and skateboarders all hanging out together. What was it like having everyone come together? 

The way I see it is we were special which is why we were here. I don’t think we took it for granted, I don’t think any of us really knew how hard life would be, some of us did but we were living in this fantasy, you know. My bar job paid me a lot of money, I could just work two nights at the bar and do the photography jobs that were a lot of fun. It was beautiful. You were kind of competing in a way, there was definitely a hierarchy of people who were getting work and attention, but it didn’t really matter. You didn’t have to be the best guy but, in your mind, you still thought you were. As a photographer, I was probably way cockier then than I am now, and I hadn’t done anything [laughs]. In my mind I was ready to be the next big thing, I think a lot of us had those delusions and some of us were actually doing it, which was amazing. I didn’t ever think I was on the level they were at, but I think delusion is what gets you here and pushes you in a city like New York that is hard to live in.

Did it feel like there were eyes on the scene or was it just for you guys like it was this insular thing of you all hanging out and not caring about the outside world?  

Didn’t care about the outside world. It didn’t feel like there were eyes on us. We felt like we were special, but it was all within our group. I remember I used to shoot parties and you would have to shoot celebrities and people in different scenes and I remember thinking we were cooler than them. I was so much more interested in us, and I think that is why I really focused a camera on us because I thought we were all so amazing. Then by the time the eyes started getting on our scene, it was around the time things started to break up.

Even now it’s like these people you were hanging out with and taking photos of are still a big deal. Did you expect that at the time these photos of people like Chloë Sevigny, Kim Gordon, Mark Gonzales, and Harold Hunter would be relics for people even twenty years on?

Yeah, I definitely felt like something was happening that needed to be documented, but there were many years where I felt like I was stupid for thinking that and for it to finally come around and be like, ‘I knew it’ feels good. It’s also really sad that so many of those people aren’t here anymore, so many people died. It really was a beautiful time; it was a special time. Not knowing what was coming as far as knowing technology and how much things were about to change, makes it even more special to me. I can understand why people might see it as an easier time, even though nothing feels easy for any youngish person. Not having such easy access to the internet made it seem like a simpler time.

It’s been twenty years since these photos were taken, what do they mean to you now?

I’m going through my photos now and getting them ready for my LA show. My wife and I are looking at them and it is a way to feel the energy that we felt, it’s a way to kind of still tap into that feeling. I think I had a selection of 27 pictures today and we are picking things to feel the energy and to remember. Getting older and having kids, our world is a much different world, there are still elements of that and people we are still connected to but it’s not the same, nor should it be at this age, I just turned 50.

It is a reminder of a time when there was still a naive magic in our lives, now with kids and much more responsibility, there is still a lot of magic and beauty but it’s different. I am probably happier now than I was then but there was something special to how that time was.