🐤: Victoria's Twitter
⭐: Victoria's DNS page
🎧: Stream the interview on DNS
🔐: Collect the NFT
We had the opportunity to sit down with Victoria West last week for an interview that was recorded on Twitter Spaces, but you can listen to it on DNS as well with our music player. We had a very pleasant talk with Victoria that covered everything, from narrowly avoiding death on the previous night 💀, her love of getting her picture taken 📸, and her favorite non photography jobs.
I encourage everyone to listen to the recording, but we did transcribe the interview and have some choice quotes available for this post. 😎 Do listen to the audio interview, though!
One last thing we want to point out, is that we've minted this interview as an NFT. We thought it would be fun to try, and we've got some ideas to reward people at a later date for collecting them. 🤫
Highlights from the Interview
On narrowly avoiding death the night before this interview:
🕓: 4m 20s
Last night I almost died, I thought I was gonna die sitting at my desk in a towel and people were gonna find me, in a towel at my desk, and think, the fuck is wrong with this girl? Why is she at her computer desk, in a towel? I had just gotten out of the shower. I went to check something, probably to buy an NFT. I don't know. Anyway, I started hearing all these gunshots going off my way. It sounded like like shots. I thought someone was shooting at me from my yard. But it was power lines were exploding, actually. It was insane.
What was your favorite non-photography job?
🕓: 9m 55s
I hated all of them. I actually hated all of them and I still have nightmares about serving food to people on occasions. But I literally still have nightmares about that. I also hated working for an oil and gas survey company, I hated that job, too.
On becoming a photographer
🕓: 8m 54s
I don't care about documenting real life moments. Not interested in it. So me being a photographer is kind of funny. But if you actually look at my work, you'll realize it has nothing to do with documenting real life moments. The camera is just the tool that I'm using to create the art that I want to make because I wasn't a good painter. I'm a failed painter that became a photographer.
Victoria on how much she enjoys her picture being taken:
🕓: 10m 37s
It's so bad that when I was graduating from high school, my mother paid me, bribed me to have my graduation photos taken. They were so horrendous, that I had to have them redone. And they were still really bad. But, we just picked one and moved on with life. So I never took pictures. I'm like the anti-photographer-photographer.
Her other artistic endeavors:
🕓: 12m 39s
What did I do before photography that was artistic? I tried a lot of things. I was like, I play guitar, but not very good. People would be like, "Wow, you're really good for a girl." Okay, I tried. I tried painting but wasn't very good. I also tried sewing things but I pretty much could only make pillows. They didn't turn out that well. I liked being creative, but I just wasn't really good at any of it.
Balancing accessibility versus scarcity:
🕓: 34m 49s
I don't worry too much about, you know, over-minting or anything like that, because it's not something I'm capable of. I literally cannot - it takes me way too long to make a piece. [...] I'm always thinking long term on on all of this, and maybe it's because I collect as well. I guess I try to do things in a way that as a collector, I would appreciate myself. So I do factor in the secondary market and I am willing to protect my floor. I've bought my own work back multiple times, and I'll do it again.
Wrap Up
Thanks again to Victoria for being such a great person to interview as well as being a good sport overall. We had a lot of fun chatting it up and we already have more of these planned! So keep an eye on this space. 👀 We're always on the lookout for interesting content and people to collaborate with too, so let us know on Discord/Twitter if you have suggestions!
🔗: Listen to the Twitter Space recording
🔗: Collect the NFT of the interview