Today we’d like to introduce you to Nic Lewis.
Hi Nic, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I genuinely believe that art is the universal language that connects us all to each other. Art can speak where cultures create barriers between us. Creativity can permeate belief systems, nations, and generations to unite us rather than divide us. No matter how different we believe we are, there is something intrinsic about the realm of creativity that moves the heart and connects us to one another. This is my “why” that is at the core of everything I put my heart into. With every photo shoot, project, job, or team I am a part of–my intention is always to inspire and help people reach their greatest potential by any creative means possible.
It’s ironic that the artistic medium I choose to dedicate my life to cannot exist without light. In order to even take a photograph, you need a source of light. The camera cannot capture an image without it. It is the same with life, we cannot exist without light. What photography did for me was become a teacher of light and life, inserting beautiful lessons of wisdom along the way.
Years ago, I would spend hours in the darkroom in San Francisco developing my film at art school. I learned that the negatives would be so sensitive to light that if it were to be exposed to any ounce of light too soon in the developing process, the roll would be ruined. Just like that. All the photographs would disappear before they even had the chance to materialize in the physical world. I’ve found this to be true in other arenas in my life where I tried to rush the process, cut corners, or take the easy way out. If I didn’t allow myself to take the time to truly prepare for something, whether it was a job opportunity, a relationship, or something I deeply desired–they too would eventually disappear.
Film was kind of thrilling in this way, you were constantly walking on the line of light and darkness in order to create something extraordinary. At every turn, there is an opportunity to make a mistake in shooting a roll of film. Mistakes where you could cause a light leak, scratch your negative, ruin half of a frame, and so on. But even if you mess up a few times, those mistakes had an unexpected way of making your photographs beautifully and uniquely you. Some of the best photos I’ve created were on accident. These lessons in the darkroom translated how I approached the many mistakes I made in life. If I allowed that difficult moment to become a part of my story rather than rejecting it, I could gain a unique wisdom from it. The accidental mistakes (both in the darkroom and outside of it) became an integral part of the thread that has led me to where I am at today.
Film forces you to slow down. You cannot see your image right away, therefore you must master the machine in your hand. You must know numbers and dials of the camera like the back of your hand so that the camera becomes an extension of your eye rather of a piece of metal obstructing your view. Once you’ve mastered your camera, the world becomes your canvas, and you can create beauty in every corner of it. Film is limited to 36 exposures in a 35mm roll, even less if you are shooting medium format. You quickly learn that you must be intentional in what you capture, you must pause and really look at what’s in the shot and decide if it’s truly worth going for. If we took that same moment to pause, breathe, and think before every time we made a decision, I cannot help but wonder how much more full our lives would be, or how much self-inflicted suffering we could avoid.
For about two years of my photography journey, I left the safety of the darkroom and ventured out into the natural world. I put my film camera on the shelf and experienced a different kind of light. I was going through a time where I was really trying to understand what spirituality and a relationship with God meant to me. I was truly searching for a deeper meaning in life and felt most at peace when I was outdoors. It was around this time that I turned to nature to center and align myself spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically. I would take my (digital) camera and tripod, and go chase sunrises, sunsets, and milky ways every other day. And I fell in love with the world of landscape photography.
What I learned was that even if I planned out a landscape shot down to the exact time of day for the most perfect lighting, there was still a chance for an unexpected dark cloud to roll in and ruin the colorful sunset right at the last moment. No matter how prepared I could be, I knew that every time I went out to shoot, I had to leave room for the Universe to show up and do its magic. At the end of the day, it was up to God (or the Universe, or whatever you feel most comfortable calling it) to paint those beautiful, awe-inspiring colors in the sky. It was during those quiet moments that I truly felt at peace and connected to a larger essence than just myself. Like God was sitting right next to me with a paintbrush in hand and the sky as the blank canvas, inviting me to capture the story he/she was about to tell us.
Once I moved to Los Angeles, my artistic journey led my right back to my roots, shooting film and people. As much as I loved being alone in nature, what I’ve come to know is that I cannot do this thing called life, alone. In the same way that I’ve found inexplicable beauty in those quiet moments in the darkroom or on a mountaintop underneath the milky way, I found so much beauty in the people I shot and work with. Throughout my time in Los Angeles, I have had the great pleasure of shooting and creating with small local businesses and larger fashion brands. And with every shoot, I felt most energized when I had the opportunity to create an environment for other creatives to come together and bring the story to life. It wasn’t taking the photos that gave me life, it was the process of creating and collaborating with my team that meant the most to me.
Light has been my mentor for over a decade, teaching me the important lessons of art and life. And the most important lesson I’ve come to know is that we are all connected. Art has this amazing way of transcending all belief systems, languages, and cultures. No matter where you are in the world, you cannot deny that art has inspired you and impacted you in some way. Art and creativity is the universal language that connects us all, with light leading the way.
As a photographer and an artist, I live to create a connection between human beings through art because we are far more powerful together than we could ever be alone.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I don’t think any road in life is completely smooth. 🙂 That’s the exciting part. I think if it were just smooth sailing, I would eventually get bored. Life is all about balance, you cannot completely embody and appreciate the pure moments of joy without knowing its counterpart. It’s the Yin and the Yang. The perfect balance of lightness and darkness, good and bad, ups and downs – and understanding how to stay centered throughout all of the bumps and turns on that road.
I’ve had too many struggles and obstacles to count, so perhaps I can take you through the journey of my most recent one.
Once I turned 30, I started to challenge and question the beliefs and structures I established in my own life (thank you, 2020, for that). I asked myself questions like; Am I truly happy? Do I want to work here? Do I even want to live in this city? Am I living a life that aligns with my authentic self? Do I actually believe what culture has taught me about life (go to college, get the job, get married, create a family – all timestamped goals to achieve by certain ages), or is there another alternative? I questioned my faith and challenged myself to take a hard look at what I genuinely believed versus beliefs and ideologies I simply adopted because someone else told me so. And I even had to question my art, am I taking photos that truly move me at my core, or just pretty pictures because people seem to like them?
Maybe you’ve recently asked yourself similar questions.
What 2020 gave us was an opportunity to pause, reflect, and re-evaluate the life we were currently living. What 2021 brought us was an opportunity to wake up and change it all for the better or force ourselves to go back to what “normal” used to be. That was the tension I lived in for that entire year, watching the majority of the world choose to go back to what it used to know. While more and more people chose to opt-out, to create something better and more authentic to who they were now. It was then that something began to shift internally, I felt that change was coming quickly but it was ultimately up to me to choose it.
It’s not easy to be willing to challenge what you have believed to be true your entire life and be open to the possibility of being wrong about a few things. To break everything down and sift through all of the truths and lies you have accumulated over the years. It takes courage to break away from the comfort and security of a job, a home, friends, or a life in order to embark on a journey to create a life filled with meaning and authenticity. And to be okay with knowing you will never have all the answers. It is uncomfortable, unpredictable, and unknown. But I truly do believe that if you do not allow yourself moments of change and room to grow, you will remain stuck.
By the end of 2021 I was ready to quit my job, sell my car and all I owned, leave everything that felt comfortable and safe and move across the globe. At the beginning of this year, 2022, my roommate and I were on a plane with a one-way ticket to England. What I wanted to do was give myself a year to travel, learn, dig deep, and figure out what was working and what wasn’t. I did not feel the need to have all the answers nor did I need to know what it was that I wanted to pursue next, or have things all figured out. I wanted to give myself the time and the space to breathe, heal, and arrive at moments of clarity where I felt aligned with who I truly am. I needed to clear the clutter and the noise that became my daily life. I did a lot of internal work, realizing that most of the problems I was experiencing in my life were because of me, I was a part of the problem – my own self getting in my own way. And just being aware of that fact created the space to heal old wounds and traumas. I allowed myself to doubt, question, read, learn, explore, and change my mind – frequently.
What I found was a balance between my ego and my soul. Between the side of me that is human and the side of me that is essence. From that centered place, I was able to cultivate my own personal power, voice, and a new direction for my life. Now I feel ready and inspired to create art from a genuine place of joy, and it is my hope that that energy can be transmuted to others throughout any shoot, project, job, or team that I am a part of in my future.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I love shooting with film. Currently, I mainly shoot with medium format cameras. There is something about the tonalities and quality of the negatives that I absolutely adore. When I see a film photograph, it just feels different. Timeless, authentic, tangible, and real.
I suppose I am most known for shooting people and fashion, which I have always found great joy in. This year, as I traveled across England and Europe, I documented everything with my medium format camera, fascinated by spaces, people, and the different cultures I was experiencing.
I find the most joy when my work is a visual celebration of diversity, culture, and the beauty of living. I love being able to capture other people’s stories and life experiences, especially ones that are drastically different than my own.
One shoot that I hold very close to my heart was an Adidas Originals campaign I did last October. I was the photographer and co-creative director with my good friend, Samath Orm. The creative brief called to highlight and celebrate the inclusivity of all sizes and BIPOC, which was even more imperative in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and all we’ve experienced across the globe as people of color that year. With being Filipina and a BIPOC artist, this project hit home on many different levels for me. Celebrate the inclusivity of all sizes and the BIPOC community. Samath and I took the time, thought, and intention with curating our team and casting models that represented a wide range of unique cultures and upbringings. Even though this was still a fashion editorial campaign, the shoot day was filled with the highest frequency of creative energy because we all felt the importance and excitement of being able to creatively express the joys of our different heritages.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up.
I grew up in a household that LOVED to dance. My parents loved to blast funk and R&B jams, and they were always dancing around the house when I was little. We lived in a small town in Idaho at the time, so not a lot of diversity. Even at a young age, I was aware that I looked different than other kids in my school because of my Asian ethnicity.
When I was a little older, we moved to San Diego and my mom enrolled me in hip-hop dance classes. I instantly fell in love. When I stepped into that dance studio, I was suddenly surrounded by music that reverberated throughout my entire body, movement that became a language of its own, and a beautiful variety of skin tones and cultures. Most of the dancers there were Asian or people of color, just like me. And for the first time, I finally felt like I belonged.
Dance quickly became a part of my identity and life. I significantly remember traveling to Vegas with my hip-hop dance team to compete in an international dance competition, where crews from every corner of the world flew in to compete and celebrate their love for dance. For a week straight, dance teams of all ages left their hearts on that stage to compete for world titles in various categories. The best part of that whole experience was cultivating a connection with people I would have never met in my entire life if it wasn’t for our shared love of movement and music. Like any form of art, dance has the beautiful ability to translate itself into every culture. It is a universal language that brings people together, no matter where they come from. It’s a love and a joy that is passed down from generation to generation. We won 1st place that year, but it wasn’t the medal that made this one of my most cherished memories. It was witnessing the room full of flags from all around the world, nations coming together, emitting nothing but love for one another, and sharing stories with strangers that quickly became lifelong friends.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://nic-lewis.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nic.lewis/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@niccilewis
Image Credits
Adidas Originals
McManus Gallery
Simple Shoes
Vulkan Magazine
Mosaic Studios
