Donna Ferrato Do you remember how we met? I saw the wildest couple walking down the street—the man seemed completely entranced by the woman, who had this almost ethereal glow, like a firefly in daylight, surrounded by a rainbow aura. I sat with my dear friend, Alex Paterson Jones, a brilliant designer. We were a little high, a little giddy, basking in the warm air. We spotted the man’s camera and I called out to them, Hey, photographer! Hey! I wanted to pull them in, drawn by the feeling that something was stirring, something electric. We needed them inside with us. So what did we say?

Daniel Arnold I looked up, slightly confused, and you told me to get up there! Kay and I had just been at the diner around the corner, and I was walking her to her studio a few blocks away in this totally ridiculous way, like a big cartoon strut, twisting together as I held her at the waist. 

DF I can spot someone strange miles away. And, as expected..

DA We were deep in our own rhythm when we suddenly heard a woman call down to us—”Hey photographer!” We looked up, and she said, Get up here. We were feeling impulsive with nowhere particular to be, we just looked at each other and went, Okay, okay. And so, we headed upstairs.

DF You get into the building, you know it’s a little odd, you’re going up the stairs, it’s kind of dark, there’s the woman from the fire escape calling you in the hallway. Keep coming, Come on, come on in there, one more flight. And then they get into the house, the two of them. It’s like we started dancing around each other trying to figure out where we were. 

DA The “what is this, who is that dance.”

DF You had a Leica, right? So I knew he was a photographer. I wanted you to know straight away that as soon as you stepped foot into my house, you could take pictures of anything you wanted, because I would have been taking your picture whenever I wanted. I guess that gave us a direction to follow in starting to understand each other, and that’s how it all sort of started, but still, you were very shy about it in the beginning.

DA I wouldn’t say shy, necessarily. Just.. It was all super impulsive—we walked in totally blind. I was just feeling it out, taking the temperature of the room. Not in a hesitant way, I was definitely up for it, but more like, Okay… what’s going on here? Where am I? Who is this person? Can I trust her?

At some point, I noticed more than one copy of a Donna Ferrato book lying around, and it clicked. Oh… wait. This is Donna Ferrato’s place. I knew your work—I was familiar with it—but I had no idea what you actually looked like. I mean, I live in New York, but that doesn’t mean I know everything. I just knew you were a big deal.

DF You didn’t know how friendly I was? 

DA I just had to walk up the fire escape to find out! It’s not that I found you unfriendly, I just didn’t know anything about you, the human. And now we’re old friends.

DF We had a ton of pastries, plenty of good stuff to eat, and we just settled in. Then he told me his name, and weirdly enough, I remembered an assistant I had a couple of years back mentioning him—said they were friends. That caught my attention. At the time, I didn’t really know Daniel Arnold’s work. I had looked him up once and thought, hmm… interesting, but it was totally outside what I was following back then. Over the years, though, I kept seeing more of his stuff, and we ended up following each other on Instagram, sort of orbiting each other from a distance. But in that moment, when he said his name—when I realized who he was—it suddenly hit me. Oh. This is something special.

DA Perfect coincidence. 

DF And your girlfriend, Kay, she is so whimsical. She doesn’t even realize she has so much strength, she’s like shards of glass, yet there’s something so powerful in her being. She has experienced so much in life: She’s young, but she’s also ancient, and suddenly she was there, showing me who she was. I was on my knees, I tell you. I was so humbled by her.

DA Oh, she knows. And yeah, you were clearly kind of intoxicated by the whole thing. It was great—just the energy of it, the time we spent together. I actually have pictures of you taking pictures of her. And the pictures of us—I don’t know if I ever showed you—but we had them up in the apartment for a while. I had to take them down because of some work we did, but for a time, they were hanging like a mobile from the light fixture. There was just something about them—the way you put it all together, the text on the back, the tape—it turned into this beautiful object. So we let it spin.

DF You gotta show that to me. This is what I like about you, Daniel—you’ve got this very cozy, straightforward vibe. Just a simple man, you know? No pretentious talk about photography, no blah, blah, blah—just the real thing. And I like your life, at least from what I’ve seen. Never been to your place, though. Maybe one day, who knows?

DA We met this spring, it was April, right?

DF Yes. Makes you think of how chance works. Speaking of working, I think we never speak about work, per se.

DA It’s interesting—leading up to this conversation for what, two months? I’ve been quietly, maybe a little neurotically, thinking about it—thinking about my work in relation to yours. I knew the magazine was interested in your Love & Lust series, and over the past month or two, we’ve talked a bit about intimacy—how it plays into both your work and mine. It’s been an interesting new angle, one I wouldn’t have necessarily applied to my own work if not for overthinking this conversation. It made me reflect on how love and lust show up in what I do—not just in the experience of intimacy but in the pursuit of it. And honestly, you could probably take that lens—Love, Lust, Intimacy—and use it to break down any two people, because really, what deeper common ground is there?

DF Than love? Let me tell you something: The majority of people don’t really carry the lust with whoever they love. It’s very rare.

DA Yeah, I had a long thought about this today on my way here. In my model of the world, which I am learning isn’t exactly like yours, lust is really just seeking love—whether it’s intentional or not. Lust is an avenue to love. And I think that, in a healthy, long-term way, love has to go looking for lust too. It’s like this snake consuming itself—lust leads to love, and then love needs to seek lust again. Because, you know, lust is of the body, and love, I think, ends up being more of the mind. It’s a choice, a sacrifice, an agreement. And I think part of maintaining that agreement, part of keeping it going, is that you have to go in pursuit of lust. That makes me think not only of my relationship but also of my work. It connects in a way I hadn’t fully considered before.

DF Without lust, there’s no human sexuality. 

DA But I also think that lust is not just about sexuality.

DF To me, lust equates sexual life force. That’s why women’s empowerment and liberation is extremely important. Our lust and pleasure drives are ours to balance. There was a time when men could control women’s drive. No more... Women’s desires can’t be confined and of service to men anymore. 

DA Wouldn’t you say that lust can also be expressed elsewhere? When I think about it in terms of work, I kind of see myself in it. Remember when we were talking about your dad and how he wanted—he wanted to take pictures so badly. At the end of the day, he’d stick his camera in the windows of strangers’ houses just to keep taking pictures. I totally get that, that first intense lust for taking pictures. It’s like, you need more, to have more, to capture more. And then, at some point, you move past that. Even though there’s still a muscle memory of it, you go from that intense lust—where you can’t go to bed because you need more pictures—to a place of long-term commitment, where you’ve got to search for that lust again, something that keeps you wanting to work, to keep putting your camera through the window. It’s interesting to think about how that evolution works. And funny, thinking about how the two—lust and love, work and life—fit together. 

DF We dovetail together very well. And that all, I think, comes from our fathers. Both of our fathers were brilliant men who both suffered a lot. And we, the children, have suffered too. 

DA Well, I’ve got to say, having been exposed to that in my life—in a sort of defanged, up-close, practical way—I also grew up in a world where experiencing the very high and the very low together just feels so natural to me.I think it’s kind of a more honest, more permissive relationship with the world. Yeah, of course I’m depressed sometimes; Of course, I’m having a month where I can barely drag myself out of bed. It’s part of it. And the highs can be just as extreme. You can go too far in either direction.

DF There’s a lot of conversation these days about how, especially the newer generation, seems to have less of a sex drive and a more complicated relationship with pleasure in all its forms. It’s not just about sex and desire, but also about how people relate to their extremes, whether that’s lust or pleasure. The suffering, you know, the human suffering, the cruelty, the barbarism, and the lack of empathy—it’s all killing our sex drive. Where’s the love? We don’t see it in front of us anywhere. It also ties into the relationship with one’s work and the enjoyment of it. 

DA What does making work look like for you, nowadays, Donna? What do you shoot?

DF I channel, or rather shoot, my rage through other women’s bodies, women I meet and photograph. Even with Kay’s body that day, when she just took her skirt down in the middle of the house—it’s a place where women come to express what they’re going through, their fears, their rage, and they feel comfortable doing so. It’s been like that for 30 years. But when she did that, capturing that moment—that’s what my work is all about. Being with her in that moment and witnessing it. It was incredible.

DA Was she showing you the tattoo on her back? 

DF Yes. It was the tattoo. Then she showed me what the hospitals had done during her surgeries. That was really powerful. But this is what I do all the time. I’m also working on stories about domestic violence.   I mean, if I put the word out there, inviting women who’ve been through hell to come and stay with me, they come. 

DA How does that part happen? 

DF It’s a very private and delicate process. Sometimes they come stay with me for a week or two. I want women to come here and live with me. I feel a deep kinship and trust with these women, like we’re all part of the same story. If they bring their child, that’s fine. If they bring a kitten, that’s fine. It all just flows from one thing to another. I always tell them, “From now on, you photograph me too, because I’m going through hell, and I want the world to see it—just like I’ll be photographing you.” I know I can be intense. Did I scare you a little when we met the first time?

DA No, I wasn’t scared. Maybe cautious, but that’s just how I am, despite running up the stairs. I’m observant. But not scared.

DF Good, good. So you feel safe with me. You know, we’re alike—that’s what we realized today. That’s why we were also so late for the interview. Sorry guys. 

DA We caught a spark of friendship from the jump, but we never managed to take the time to sit and swap lore. So we had to take a little extra time rolling out the good stories.

DF Family, craziness, and being honest about it is what brought us closer.

DA Gotta be honest! My idyllic Midwestern beginnings worked like a force field, something I carried with me that eventually had to be broken. I’ve never wanted blinders, but it takes a while to figure out which parts of your life are fantasy. I’ve always pursued reality, always been curious about chaos. And strangely, I think that raw, unfiltered living–though it might feel crazy–it ends up giving you a more grounded existence.

DF Does that have something to do with finding love in your life?

DA Yeah, definitely. That young, idealistic love-seeker in me had to be dismantled—not by me, though. I can’t take credit for that. I just threw myself hard against a lot of brick walls and learned the hard way that Disney life wasn’t available to me. At first, I had that naïve phase where I wanted to turn everyone into the love of my life, for the rest of my life—which, let’s be real, is a tough dream to bring to New York. Then, for seven, eight, maybe nine years, I swung completely in the other direction. I told myself, “No one can have me.” I poured everything into work, compulsively, obsessively. And it delivered. At some point, I realized I was experiencing the feeling of being in love—but alone. Not in love with myself, just in love. Chemically. I was consumed by work, by what I was putting in and getting back. It felt just like love.

DF Amazing. You know, in that way, we’re total opposites. When I came to New York, everything felt possible. I could find love easily and work like a beast at the same time—doing my own projects while hustling like a little street rat, picking up assignments with local downtown newspapers. It was all within reach. I was constantly throwing myself into relationships, wild love affairs, sneaking into the craziest clubs—Paddles, Chateau 19—dressing up, playing with men, making everything part of the experience. That’s how Love&Lust came together, all tangled together in the thrill of it. Photographing swingers, going to orgies, meeting Elizabeth and Bengt. 

DA You’re the cautionary tale! I’m kidding, but there’s such a low hanging metaphor-microcosm here, with you swinging off the fire escape inviting me, a stranger, into your home, and me coming up and being cautious, and you wondering if maybe I’m afraid!

DF Here you were, with your girlfriend, and me begging you to take pictures.

DA Think about the way we work. It’s very telling. I have a much more cautious, guarded relationship with the world. You dive in deep, right up to someone’s belly button while they’re in the middle of having sex. Meanwhile, I’m slipping by unnoticed, catching a shot on the street without anyone even realizing I’m there. I’m gone before they can say hello. And I think both approaches have their own truth. They seem, to me, opposite expressions of the same itch—just different personalities finding their own way of coping, dealing with the world as a collectible surface. What I do on the street—while it’s what I’m publicly known for—has also been my education. I had this insatiable desire to document, to collect. Coming to this city with my little Milwaukee mentality, I felt like I needed to take everything home with me. That desire propelled me through an education I didn’t even realize was happening. At first, I didn’t know how to use the camera—I just pointed it at things I wanted. But as dissatisfaction with that grew, I learned. The camera became an extension of my body; I know it inside and out now. And along with that technical evolution, there’s always been the internal work—the work around my family, my home, my relationships. Even though that’s more private, I approach it with the same intensity. Just as you shot your domestic violence work, I document my own home in that same deep, personal way.

DF You see, that’s beautiful—truly beautiful. 

DA It’s been a way to make sense of the early hiccups in a relationship, when you don’t fully know where the other person stands. My absent-minded, work-obsessed way of being could have easily felt like neglect, like not caring enough. But I had to point it out—look at how I live my life, look at the time, energy, and attention I pour into this. The three cameras on my desk next to the bed, the way I treat our existence as something worth keeping, collecting, studying. It’s not detachment—it’s devotion, just in my own language.

DF To be able to share a life with someone who understands and connects with this, it’s a beautiful thing. 

DA When I think about it in relation to your work—the sex, the domestic violence, the big headline stories like Donna Ferrato—it’s obviously a different subject matter. I’m not documenting violence or abuse, but still, thinking about it alongside what you do gives me a new perspective on my own work. I’ve cultivated this relationship with my home where I can be completely in it, fully present and lovingly invested, yet still maintain an outsider’s perspective—feels meaningful. It allows me to step back and say, this matters, we need to keep this. I had such a juicy thought about this. When we were talking before the interview—yeah, the story of your dad. She told me about her father, this compulsive, insatiable photographer, always reaching for the camera, always capturing. Sticking the lens through a window at night, photographing everything, every moment.

DF You know, sharing these things with people—especially family—creates a bond like no other. I have a relationship with my ex-husband, Johnny. He’s been through everything with my parents, my brothers, and me. The street is just the surface. Home is where everything truly unfolds, where you see the raw, unfiltered truth. That’s where the real shit happens. 

DA I don’t want to over-tell your story, but your dad experienced something profound—sitting in his home as an old man, watching his betrayed wife destroy all the work he had ever made. We call that a tragedy. A triumph for your mother, a tragedy for your father. But in that moment, I also thought—maybe it’s perfect. Because it clarifies the real core value of it all. You take away the work, and at first, it feels like erasure, like his life has been undone. But because he made that work. Because he cultivated that part of his mind and arranged his life around it. He lived in a way that can’t be erased. Those pictures existed because he saw, thought, and engaged with the world in a certain way. And that—his relationship with the world—means so much more than any legacy ever could, more than any proof ever could. It was his life. It was the world. Having all your work disappear, it’d be heartbreaking—but only for a moment. The life that created it, the experiences and state of mind behind it, can never be taken away.

DF Think of the Palisades—through the fires, through the loss. Everything is dust to dust. We’re not in control. Photographers, filmmakers, musicians—losing everything they’ve ever created. But they still have themselves.

DA It might be an insensitive time to think this, but there is a version of losing everything that might actually be a gift.

DF It’s about resistance. So many are just waiting to see what happens—but if you’ve been paying attention, you already know. We’re breathless, always bracing for the worst. Without collective action, we’ll all end up like Metropolis—faceless drones, marching back and forth, stripped of individuality. In fact, we may already be there. Resistance is all we have left. And somehow, we have to build it together.

DA Well yeah, you said something a little while ago—what can you do to be good? You be of service. You bother to see who’s around you and you do what you can to help. When we’re at risk of becoming drones, that’s a powerful guiding light, even without revolutionary upheaval. That’s one of the great things about New York, especially for photographers. You can’t help but tune into the idea that being of service is everything—it’s the way out of any darkness. Maybe that’s naive, maybe it’s not enough for what’s coming. But it feels like the right place to start, community. It connects you to your humanity in a sort of smelling salts way. Wakes you up.

DF Build relationships. In the subways, they say, Don’t be someone else’s subway story. But the truth is, I am the story. I’ve been creating and telling these stories for a long time—through my own lens, my own voice. My father used to say, If it wasn’t for you, Donna, men would still be getting away with beating their wives. You showed the world how ugly it is. You made men feel guilty—at least for a while. Who knows? Do you think New York still has its own creative language?

DA New York is a place where, no matter when you show up, you always feel like you just missed it. There’s so much I missed, that I’ve come to fetishize. But the creative language of the city—it transcends generations. I think New York does something to people. Whether it’s meaningful—-or getting better or worse, I’m not sure—but it taps into something deep.There’s an undeniable thread through hundreds of years—people who come here and fall into the same obsessive relationship with the city, trying to articulate their own special connection. When I found out Leaves of Grass was about walking around Manhattan, looking at the people, I went nuts. It’s so far back, it’s not even photography. It just feels like such profound time travel to find it all alive in myself. New York still has that essence. Being in this place, in the mess of people making their mythology—it’s like a constant. It hits people in a way that’s traceable through time, and it doesn’t change that much. You really feel impermanence pressed on your throat here. Every store, every restaurant is built on the ghost of 500 others, and you look away for a month and there’s an entirely new city. Everything is so fleeting. It makes you want to catch every face, every train, to hold onto the moment. It intensifies the instinct to value the passing moment because everything moves so fast, and you’re confronted constantly with your impermanence and your insignificance. My story is as good as anybody else’s, because I can see we’re all going to end up erased. So whatever, might as well enjoy the ride.

DF I think that’s what it is about New York—it’s always had this sense embedded in it, even before this feeling became so widespread.

DA Yeah. It’s a very New York thing that has infected the world. We shouldn’t be surprised –we’ve been trying to infect them forever.