Arnold’s pursuit of the human moment reveals an artist of emotional range in a city alive with contradiction and complexity. You Are What You Do is 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. Daniel Arnold (b. 1980, USA) is a photographer whose candid, street-level images capture the unfiltered rhythms of urban life. Arnold is based in New York and his first monograph, Pickpocket, was published by Elara Press in 2022. His photography regularly appears in publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, and Interview magazine. His recent solo exhibitions include New York Life, New York Life Gallery and New Photographs, Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, San Francisco. Section-sewn landscape hardcover with dust jacket and mirrored sticker275 x 225 mm, 184 pages, 124 colour plates Edited by Sarah Chaplin EspenonDesigned by Loose Joints Studio LJ215, November 2025ISBN 978-1-912719-70-9
