Bash Compactor: Original Zin

Keenan Mitchell needed a job, so he walked into the Levi's Photo Workshop  on Wooster Street in Soho. After simply picking up a broom and sweeping the 10,000-square-foot space without being told for a few days in a row, the thrashy dude with a yellow cut-off tee and a pile of brunet curls was given the promise of cash and a more specific task. Mitchell spent the better part of last Monday hanging small photos of freshly used hotel beds in an exacting grid.

“There are 200 here, but we scrapped the worst five,” Mitchell said before moving to the wall to straighten one of the pics.

Their creator, Nick Zinner, guitarist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and a photographer by training, brought the photos in three big Trader Joe’s tote bags. Tuesday night, an exhibit of his snaps called 1,001 Images (though I was told anonymously there were actually 1,005) opened for viewing; the hotel photos played a small part in the exhibit’s collection, which disappeared from the walls by Saturday.

So Tuesday night, we were there to celebrate and it was all about Zinner. Which is cool, because the guy’s got some refined taste: his bud Spencer Sweeney  DJed some weird gold; the awesome Australian rock band Circle Pit played a perfectly energetic set; there were tons of free beers; babes abounded.

Santigold was there looking fresh, as were Regina Spektor and Adrian Grenier, but I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say to them; they were snapping pics in the free photo booth near the door. More exciting weirdoes caught my attention: the painter Flex and I tried to find some smoke, and Brooklyn artist Jesse Hlebo and I caught up on the politics of psychedelia.

Karen O showed up in a red-and-black houndstooth blazer and my fandom got the better of me for a second when she actually took my hand. She arrived with the smiley K.K. Barret, production designer par excellence and drummer of the awesome ’70s punk band The Screamers.

“I feel like Nick is a photographer first and musician second,” Barret told me. Zinner somehow molded both into one beast: the photos were mostly from the last 10 years of touring with the YYYs.

The band’s drummer, Brian Chase, caught up with me outside the space at the end of the night.

“Nick is very particular,” he said.

“The sonics of his guitar playing, the timbres and the look of these photos are all very particular. He has an amazing attention to detail. There are many photos here, but each one deserves examination.”