Our first exposure to Adam T. Deen's work was at a gallery show in Athen's focused on his ice boat photography. We knew Adam, but looking at his work was a revelation. Can you know an artist, truly, until you've spent time with their work? I don't think so. So, we bought a few large format prints for our future home.
What Adam does so well is capturing the point where action and slowness intersect. While freezing a moment, he manages to retain energy and magnify emotion.
We discussed his debut book, Spare Time.
How did you develop from a person who takes photos into a photographer?
I came up in the world of fashion photography as a set builder, and then later on I worked as a digital tech. The idea of “the photographer,” to me, was cut in stone via the call sheet. At the time, my interaction with a camera was in the moments traveling to and from set. I developed a pretty expansive street photography practice because it would take anywhere from half an hour to a few hours to get to set everyday. I was photographing whatever interested me in the moments along the way.
My first commission with a newspaper felt really good, because I got to do just that—observe my surroundings and capture life as it unfolds. That kind of recognition, along with some critical support from friends who are artists and my wife who works in the museum field, helped give me the confidence to start thinking about my creative work as art. So, really, it's been a journey.
Spare Time is a collection of images of people and moments captured in the 'off hours'. Did you set out to photograph these moments, or did you discover that a collection was forming on its own?
What I was doing revealed itself most clearly in the editing process. The photos were taken over a decade, from 2014 to 2024, and it just felt instinctual. I kept pursuing these kind of "off hours" moments, from spectacles to the quiet moments. The Germantown Library approached me about doing a solo exhibition—anything I wanted—and I'd also been thinking about doing a book for awhile. It seemed like the right time. The notion of "Spare Time" arose during the editing process while looking through my archive.
A lot of credit for the book goes to my partner, Jen, who has an incredible aesthetic eye and is a natural at making beauty, but also to Caitlin MacBride, who wrote the essay for the book that really put everything in focus, and in a historical context. She is a fantastic artist. I was so honored when she said yes to contributing a new text to the book and overwhelmed when I first read it.
So much of your work is centered on noticing. What is something we can learn from your experience truly noticing the world around you?
To me the thought of “noticing” relates a little bit to how I feel about time in general. I love hearing other peoples opinions on what time is, and I don’t have a fully formed idea of what it is for myself.
I think about time as it relates to my experience of the passing seconds, then expanding it out in steps...thinking about time as it relates to everything around me, but also thinking from the point of view of other people, animals, the natural world vs. the human-created world. I think about how where I am and what I’m noticing—the composition and everything within in the frame—is the product of a confluence of an unfathomable amount of events that preceded it.
I find something about that monumental scale of thinking grounding. I like how relatively small you are in the bigger picture. It makes a lot of things feel special. When I head out into the world with a camera to look for themes, stories, or whatever I happen across, that is when I am most relaxed.
How do you balance between creating an image and capturing serendipity?
There can be a definitive line there. Sometimes when I’m creating a photograph of an interior, which can be the opposite of serendipity, but then the natural light does something cool through the windows, and it changes everything. There is a voice that goes off in my head like a really loud “Now Now Now!” That urgency can be very exciting and energizing as well as whatever the opposite of that is.
Sometimes I’ll set out to make a photograph or a set of photographs that I’ve put a lot of thought into before hand, but it may not be panning out. That same voice will creep in telling me to make it work or figure it out. The moment I am seeking could be happening somewhere that I’m not looking.
You've released the book in a numbered limited run. What inspired that format?
The first edition of the book is a limited run of 100 copies. Each one is numbered and signed. A work of art doesn't have to be only something that is framed and hung on a wall. I wanted this book, which I'm really proud of, to be seen as a work of art too.