Over the last decade, Andre D. Wagner's photographs have documented the rhythms of daily life, both on the streets of his native Brooklyn and further afield. His work seems to capture the essence of what it is to be human, although he sees things a little differently.
'I think photography can sometimes inherit a very extractive language,' he explains. 'We speak about "taking" pictures or "capturing" places, but I’m not sure that’s what I’m doing. I’m usually trying to empty myself enough to receive what’s already there.'
Whether through his work photographing Black youth and communities in New York or portraits of some of the world's most famous faces, Wagner's intuition allows us to see behind the eyes of his subjects, feeling the emotional weight of a lived moment.
For this new project, he's turned his lens – in this instance, a Google Pixel phone – to nature, photographing the wilds of Mallorca, Spain for a body of work that, for once, leaves the human condition far behind.
Wallpaper*: Why Mallorca?
Andre D. Wagner: Mallorca was simply where life had placed me at that moment. I arrived open, and over time, the place began to reveal itself.
W*: What's the secret to capturing the essence of a place when you are merely passing through?
ADW: Even if I’m only passing through a place, I try not to arrive with rigid expectations or predetermined narratives. In Mallorca, the longer I walked and stayed open, the more porous I became to the rhythm of the place. Eventually, it felt less like I was moving through Mallorca and more like Mallorca was moving through me.
So if there’s a secret, it’s probably openness. Letting the place speak before you try to define it.
W*: You've spent over a decade photographing people. What do you get from turning your camera to the land?
ADW: Photographing landscapes gives me a temporary release from the density of human drama, though I don’t mean that negatively. People carry immense psychological and emotional complexity, especially in cities. The landscape opens a different register for me, something more elemental.
In Mallorca, that meant the sea, the mountains, shifting air, altitude, cold mornings, warm afternoons. Those elements began shaping my attention in a different way.
But I don’t necessarily see landscape as less dramatic than photographing people. In many ways, the elemental world is even more dynamic. Humans are still part of nature. We’re expressions of the same forces.
So while the subject matter changes, my approach doesn’t change very much. I’m still responding intuitively to light, composition, texture, rhythm and whatever feels alive or reverberant in the moment. The photograph becomes a way of holding some trace of that experience.
W*: What's your favourite part of Mallorca? Where should we stay?
ADW: I stayed in the mountains of Sóller. If you enjoy solitude and a slower rhythm, you really can’t go wrong there. The mountains and the air have a way of slowing you down in the best possible way.
W*: Can you recommend something to inspire creativity on the island?
ADW: I was in Mallorca through an artist residency called MEKKA whose whole ethos was centred around rest, simplicity, presence and giving artists space to just be. So I wasn’t there trying to force inspiration.
What I found instead was that when you slow down enough, nothing kind of becomes everything. Inspiration starts appearing in very small and quiet ways.
That said, one practical thing I highly recommend is renting a Vespa. Moving through the island that way felt incredibly freeing and immersive, especially in the mountains and smaller towns.
W*: What's something not to miss?
ADW: I happened to be there during the off-season, and honestly, that felt like the thing not to miss. The quietness of the island was incredibly beautiful to me.
I think we sometimes overlook our own instincts because there’s this idea that there’s a ‘right’ or popular way to travel. But for me, Mallorca revealed itself most deeply through slowness, space, and simplicity.
W*: What projects do you have coming up?
ADW: I have a photo book titled New City, Old Blues coming out this year through the Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, which feels significant because it represents work made over a decade in New York.
At the same time, I’ve been moving quite a bit recently. I spent a month in Japan in January and have been in India since February. By the time I return to New York, it’ll likely be sometime in June. All of that movement has opened up a completely new body of work that I’m still processing, but it feels deeply energising and expansive.
Since 2019, Creator Labs has served as Google Pixel’s incubator for visual storytelling. Born from a mission to safeguard artistic autonomy, the program provides world-class photographers with the capital and technology to execute ambitious, non-commercial bodies of work. For Season 10, Andre Wagner joins an elite cohort of six global artists tasked with "Asking More" of their medium.