Laurel Nakadate collects men. The New York video artist has made her mark exploring the arcane psyche of a very peculiar archetype—the single man, the rural outcast, the lonely bachelor. As an M.F.A. student at Yale, Nakadate began enlisting older local men who tried to pick her up in intricately staged video projects that mixed voyeurism, comedy, awkwardness, and no small degree of old-fashioned raunch.

In these videos, Nakadate has developed a kind of ongoing visual diary, with the artist herself poised at all times squarely in the frame—posing in her underwear, playing dead, or dancing to Britney Spears. The final products are intensely personal, colored with a childish nostalgia and what might best be described as a life-affirming sadness.

This fall she’ll be taking part in three shows in New York—at the Asia Society, Danziger Projects, and Mary Boone Gallery.

This conversation took place on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, involving a few beers, a cupcake, and an in-depth discussion of the very real differences between exploitation and empathy.

—Scott Indrisek

I. SINGLE-ROOM OCCUPANCY

THE BELIEVER: Before you went to Yale you did still photography at a number of girls’ schools.

LAUREL NAKADATE: I was an undergrad in Boston at the Museum School. I had just moved to Boston from Iowa, and I only knew one person and it was this girl who was going to Wellesley, which is an all-girls school. It’s known for its “prestigious graduates.” I started going to these parties at Wellesley that my friend Lisa invited me to. And I would take this bus from Harvard Square that picked up Harvard and MIT boys—and me—to take us to the party. It was called the Fuck Bus. I’d ride the Fuck Bus with a bunch of eighteen-year-old boys, and I’d have my camera and my video camera and I’d take pictures of these parties, which were sponsored by the school—they were on campus in these beautiful dining halls or ballrooms. Essentially, for four years I watched girls get really drunk on their parents’ dollar and take off their clothes for visiting boys and professors. I watched the whole thing, and that’s where I got my start taking pictures, I guess.

BLVR: You applied for the photo program at Yale, for documentary photography—

LN: I showed up to this photo program and ended up immediately making videos, which were one part documentary and one part this constructed narrative that came out of my head, sort of spur-of-the-moment narratives with these men that I met.

BLVR: Were you doing that from day one, making videos involving strangers?

LN: Yeah. I got to Yale and I didn’t know what I wanted to photograph....