Chad Moore - Thirteen

2012, First edition, Glassine Box, New York

Chad Moore is a photographer born in Tampa, Florida, and based in New York City. Riding around Brooklyn on his BMX, he began using his camera to connect with the new city and meet other like-minded creatives — many who became his inspirations and muses in his work. He became very close to Ryan McGinley, his “older brother from another mother”, whom he would later go on to assist.

Thirteen is Moore’s first photobook, self-published by Glassine Box. Thirteen introduced Moore’s coming-of-age-style photography with a mixture of innocence and rebellion, the perfect balance of nostalgia and youth culture pre-social media. This became the common theme of his other published works.

“I see Chad's work as free from pretensions or calculation. His photographs are not overly wrought, or laborious. They are spontaneous and raw. The pictures here contain all the dynamic fire of youth and all that is young in art. There appears to be a knee-jerk informality in the pictorial composition of these shots, evidencing the unconstrained nature of Moore's aesthetic approach to photography. There is something automatically nostalgic about these images too; of times gone past. They have a 'remember when' tone. They remind us of fun loving days, of crazy romance filled nights that we still think of fondly at times, and of long ago faded summers. But here, we are left to contend with the fresh zeal of Chad Moore's photographs that capture the now, the immediacy of today, that pushes us gallantly into the unfolding future.” - JACK WALLS