SATURDAY 7:30 PM SEPTEMBER 13, 2025 CHINATOWN
Is Quentin Belt the people’s photographer? Or a downtown jester hellbent of capturing your most awkward social moments? For the New York It-Boy and artist, it may be a bit of both. After moving to the city in 2010, Belt began party blogging, capturing debaucherous nights and the icky mornings after. 15 years later, he’s still kicking it on Instagram, where photo dumps that juxtapose candid celebrity moments and silly group shots reveal the raw personas underlying our carefully curated feeds, or at least how Quentin sees us. But his work isn’t just for the grid. Last week, the 40-year-old photographer published Camera Roll_001 by Wahter Studio, a glossy tome featuring the photographer’s satirical Insta-poetry alongside portraits captured over the past year. It’s a love letter to the grannies, he tells me over a cigarette break during his launch party at Time Again. The people who who survive and thrive in the city.
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TAYLORE SCARABELLI: Quentin, I was concerned. I had to flip very far in the book before there was a photo of me.
QUENTIN BELT: You found it.
SCARABELLI: It’s an objectively bad photo but I was like, “You know what?” I love it.
BELT: Listen, it’s love. It’s what I see.
SCARABELLI: I look like I have a hernia but cute? But really all the photos are gorg. Whoever helped you with the photo selects—
BELT: Angelo [Cappellazzo], my publisher. I sent him a thousand pictures and he chose. I love his forward too. It made me tear up earlier. It’s really sweet. Yeah—hi!
Speaker 4: Congratulations.
BELT: Thank you, baby.
SCARABELLI: And these photos are recent right?
BELT: All the photos are from this year—hi, baby. I’m doing a quick interview. They’re inside though if you want to get one. You have three photos in there.
Speaker 5: Hell yeah. All right. Do your thing.
SCARABELLI: Where were we? You sent him the photos—
BELT: I sent him all the photos. He sent me back one draft and I was like, “Okay, you have to change a couple of things,” because there were some people that had a page to themselves that would not have a page to themselves in my book. Like [REDACTED].
SCARABELLI: Oh my gosh.
BELT: I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. She cannot have a full page in my book. That’s crazy.
SCARABELLI: [Laughs]
BELT: But it’s all love.
SCARABELLI: It’s interesting because there’s a couple celeb moments, but they’re not the focus.
BELT: It’s not about that. I like that the celeb photos are very sporadic and also them out of their main element. Them in a chill situation. When they first did it, they had a famous person on one of the first pages and I was like, “Absolutely not that. That’s not the vibe. It’s not about them.”
SCARABELLI: And also there’s no credits, no names. It’s all just people you meet out and about. Anonymous.
BELT: I thought about putting their ats, but I’m like, “No, it’s not about that.” It’s like people are going to look at this book and be like, “Oh, this is a scene.” It’s a moment in New York and I’m so happy that I was asked to capture it. I’m really excited.
SCARABELLI: Going off that, what is the moment in New York right now? What are you seeing and feeling?
BELT: For me, it’s holding on to the people that I’ve known for years, the grannies. There’s a lot of people in this book that I don’t know, but there’s so many people in here that are dug into my heart and that’s a beautiful thing for me. I just turned 40 this year. My moment right now is settling into the idea of who I am in New York City. For a long time I felt like a poser. I felt like I was latching onto something that wasn’t exactly mine. I know it’s mine now.
SCARABELLI: That’s beautiful. So what do you hope is going to come out of this?
BELT: From this? I want to get into the archive. My archive is coming and it’s going to be fucking major.
SCARABELLI: Yeah, that’s a coffee table book.
BELT: That’s a coffee table book. 2010, 2011, 2012, early. It’s going to be so fucked. Everybody, they’re going to die, the people who are in the book.
SCARABELLI: Because we’ve talked about the indie sleaze revival happening. You and I stopped at that stupid LA Apparel party. When we got home Slava said, “When is the ghetto gothic revival happening?”
BELT: I mean, I hope it happens. But the scenes have split so much and it’s so divided, gay and straight. I don’t know if it would actually come back the way it was ever.
SCARABELLI: Interesting, you think it’s divided?
BELT: It’s so divided. Back in the day, we would have a gay party and it would be half of the main skaters in New York City there. All the straight boys would be in that party. I don’t think it’s the same anymore.
SCARABELLI: Well, I feel like the young straight kids are really trying to do their own thing, spearheaded by older straight men.
BELT: Absolutely. I agree.
SCARABELLI: I’m glad the kids are having fun, but it’s a little-
BELT: You’re absolutely right. The kids who are in their twenties are going to parties thrown by people in their forties. It doesn’t really make sense to me. It’s like, why aren’t you holding onto your people? Why aren’t you captivating your audience? You know what I mean?
SCARABELLI: I think that’s a really interesting take because people don’t talk about that. It’s all about fresh meat.
BELT: It’s all about who just moved to New York. It’s like, no, who’s been here for 10 years? Who was here during Hurricane Sandy? Who remembers fucking Opening Ceremony? That is the energy that I’m bringing, we’re celebrating the grannies.
SCARABELLI: Perfect.
