It’s hard to imagine it now, but there was once a time when we didn’t document every moment of our lives. When photographs had to be taken on actual cameras and openly sharing moments from your personal life with strangers on the internet was seen as sort of weird. When Patrick O’Dell set up his photo blog Epicly Later’d in 2004, he did something that felt totally new. He’d document his life and the lives of his friends on his digital camera, capturing nights out and nights in, and upload them to the site. Quickly, he found an audience of thousands.

Twenty years later, the cultural phenomenon that was Epicly Later’d has been resurrected as a photo book that offers a fascinating glimpse into O’Dell’s twenties. Famous figures whom O’Dell called friends, such as Chloë Sevigny, Dash Snow, and Ben Cho, are dotted throughout, capturing the downtown New York 00s scene in all its lo-fi glory.

We caught up with Patrick O’Dell to chat about the book, the origins of Epicly Later’d and what it was like to party in a time before the iPhone.

Barry Pierce: Hey Patrick, I absolutely love the book. It’s such a great document, like a time capsule. How would you describe it?
Patrick O’Dell: I think I was worried about it because it’s not a photo book. I mean, it is. But I love really classic photo books, like a Lee Friedlander photo book. So I’ve become really self-conscious. Maybe it is, like you’ve said, a time capsule.

BP: And the images are very lo-fi, very on the fly. They have a proto-Instagram aesthetic. Could you tell me about the origins of the Epicly Later’d site?
PO’D: I went to photography art school and I worked for Thrasher but I felt like I wasn’t able to share the pictures as much as I wanted. You know, like, you make nice prints and then they sit in a box. So, then, in my early twenties, I started an internship at Index, which was a magazine I just loved. There I met Amy Kellner, Jesse Pearson, Ryan McGinley, Lesley Arfin and all the people who are in the book. Amy had a blog called Teenage Unicorn where she documented each night like it was a little adventure. I called her and was like, I want to do that too. She told me to buy this little camera, a Canon ELPH, and go to Yahoo to register the domain name. I remember sitting there trying to make up names for the blog. I tried, like, Skateboard Showcase, a bunch of names. Then Epicly Later’d worked, which was just an in-joke we had. I didn’t think the name was going to be anything important. I went with it because it was, like, my fifth try. That was how the blog started. I would go out at night or on skateboard trips and just take pictures. I think people liked it because, before Instagram, it was a lens into pro skateboarders’ personal lives. As well as the lives of artists and people in New York City.

BP: How long was it before the site became popular?
PO’D: Our perception of what big numbers are now is different but I remember, within a couple days, a page getting 1,500 views and being like, wow, that’s insane. There’s 1,500 people who looked at this? Because I was used to that box of photos that would just sit there and maybe only your class would see them. So the idea of 800 people looking at what I did last night seemed insane to me. 

“If I went out on a night in my 20s, someone might have a camera but was the exception rather than the rule.”

BP: Did it ever cause any conflict within you that these throwaway images that you took on a small digital camera of your nights out were what you were becoming known for? Rather than the legitimate photography that you did for work?
PO’D: I didn’t really overthink it. I’m proud of the book but the only small thing I regret was that I used such a terrible camera and I became so into just snapping pictures out at night. Sometimes I’m like, man if I had just used a Contax film camera with a flash instead, I would have some really iconic photos of some really amazing people. A lot of the photos have red eye and they’re out of focus.

BP: But that aesthetic, with the red eye and the over-exposure from the flash, does feel like the correct way to document that era. It was the early days of digital cameras. I like that they’re not clean.
PO’D: Yeah, I guess I have no regrets. They’d be a little more elevated or a little more prestigious if they were black-and-white film photos. I have some of those but I excluded them from the book. Shooting film and developing it was also just so much more expensive. 

“I was reliving all my thoughts and feelings, good and bad, just reliving my life.”

BP: But that doesn’t really fit with what the ethos of what the site was.
PO’D: Yeah, I would upload the photos that night or the next morning. 

BP: The scene that you captured, do you think it still exists?
PO’D: I don’t know, I feel now people would assume that they’re going to have their picture taken. Like, if you go to a really nice party now, you assume that pictures would be part of the night. If I went out on a night in my 20s, someone might have a camera but was the exception rather than the rule.

BP: Yeah it would have been something that you’d actively have to bring with you. You didn’t just have a camera on your phone. You have to bring an actual camera.
PO’D: Right, I don’t think people went out assuming that anyone would see them. I always felt so socially awkward that I made it my role to be the guy who’s going to take a picture. If I became the guy who might take your picture, I’d have something to do with my hands. 

BP: How big was the archive?
PO’D: I went through at least 100,000 pictures but I had to stop. I needed the book to have an endpoint. The main meat of the book is when I was in my 20s. When I was 30 I moved to Los Angeles and some of that is in the book but I started to lose steam a little bit. I wasn’t the person who’d go to parties every night. Also, at some point, I got an iPhone and began using that for photography, so I used that switch as the cut-off.
It was intense to go through all of the pictures. It was like going into a time machine because I’m married now and I have a four-year-old boy. With film photos, everything might be out of order, but every one of these photos is in order. So I was going through every night out from the 20s in exact order. I was reliving all my thoughts and feelings, good and bad, just reliving my life.

“I was tripping on one yesterday, it was Chloë Sevigny’s 50th birthday and in the book we were at her 30th birthday party. And I was like, that was twenty years ago? Fuck.”

BP: What is that experience like?
PO’D: It was mixed. Some of it was positive and some it was sad. There are pictures of people who have since died. You also witness the mistakes that you made. I could see a path in front of me and I now know I took the wrong one. It was like the Ghost of Christmas Past, I’m looking at things I did, good and bad, from the past. I don’t usually sit around thinking that I’m old or that my life is behind me, but I was tripping on one yesterday, it was Chloë Sevigny’s 50th birthday and in the book we were at her 30th birthday party. And I was like, that was twenty years ago? Fuck.

BP: What was your own rubric for a photo to make the final edit? What elements did it need to have?
PO’D: I looked for photos with a certain energy to them. Some of the images were chosen for the fashion. Some had old technology in them, like someone was holding the same camera that I was using. It was a mixture. I did put things in that meant something to me that might not mean something to anybody else. It’s not an autobiography but it felt like one. Occasionally there’s a photo of someone who I wasn’t really that close to but it’s mainly people I know. Sue Barber, who laid the pictures out, she would look at the clothing, the fashions, like “Oh, someone might be interested in this.” I usually look for pictures with a lot of energy to them. I didn’t want to embarrass anyone, the pictures are all mostly wholesome.

All images courtesy of Patrick O’Dell and Epicly Later’d.
Epicly Later’d by Patrick O’Dell is published by Anthology Editions and can be purchased here.