[Interview] The Underground World of Deonté Lee
Timothy LeBlanc: Hey Deonté it is good to see you how are you doing?
Deonté Lee: I’m doing amazing. It’s a beautiful day in New York.
Timothy: So, to start it off, how is it that you would describe your photographic process?
Deonté: So, when you talk about photographic process do you mean the technical aspect or my approach to photography?
Timothy: Your approach to photography.
Deonté: Well at school I was a media and cultural studies major and so within this major you look through media as well as films and you are aware of the different techniques and what that means for the person creating the work and for the viewer. For a simple example, let say as a camera person or like I am above someone and taking a picture so they are below me. If I am taking that picture then the viewer sees themselves above the subject which puts the subject at less power than them. Which is normally what you see back in the day when they would shoot women. They would always shoot them from the top to make them seem more vulnerable and like they need help and things like that and to give them less power. If you were to shoot them from the bottom, which they normally did for men, it gives the subject more power over the viewer because the subject is overlooking the viewer. They would naturally do this with men to assert their dominance and their power over the person looking at the image or film.
So, for me one of my main things that I always try to do is be either directly at the eye line, like I’ll be at the same level as them in order to give the subject and viewer the same level of power or I’ll try and shoot it from below looking up at them in order to give the subject more power over the viewer. I primarily work with queer individuals. Traditionally in society they are put down and so I want to give them that power. In terms of styling, I really enjoy a nice high flash and like I call it clarity porn a little bit. I love it when you zoom into an image and you can see how crispy it is. You can see the individual’s pupil and the little pores in someone’s skin and see that nice crispness. Working in low income areas and with Queer people I want to make them look like they just came out of a magazine because their creativity should be in a magazine and they are beautiful for it too but they are often not shown unless they are being exploited or are super famous.
Timothy: I completely see this in your work. It does a good job of elevating all of the people you shoot. That kind of talks more to your personal work but you do quite a bit of commercial work too. Do those ideas differ between the commercial and the personal work?
Deonté: I believe in terms of commercial versus personal the camera angles I try to continue those themes as well and also still high flash. Doing commercial work I’m working under constraints sometimes. Like if I am doing behind the scenes work, sometimes directors will be like, “well I don’t want you to edit it that much. I want to look more like gritty or not super polished,” so that it looks like BTS shot as opposed to its own work that could stand on its own. So, there are times I have to aware of that. If I am shooting on location or on a music video then I can’t naturally use flash while working on set because it could interfere with the camera, like you could see the flash while they’re filming. Aside from that if I can go ahead and pull the artist away from set or at least away from filming then I will go ahead and use flash and stuff like that.
Timothy: A lot of the commercial work you’ve done does work well in tandem with your personal work. With the various individuals, you’ve shot that are let’s say are more “commercial”, they do integrate themselves well with the Queer culture you’ve come to document although the personal work is more focused. How is it that you came to documenting the underground Queer dance culture, which you are a part of, in Los Angeles and New York?
Deonté: Even before I thought about documenting it I really just wanted to be there. I remember that when I grew up, I grew up in a small desert called Adelanto in California and there this no Queer culture or artistic culture at all either so I was always looking for Queer films. I came across Party Monster by Fenton Bailey and I saw all these beautiful queer people dressed up, all uniquely dressed up and just parting and really enjoying themselves. Even though it is like a really crazy film if you look at it just from the party aspect it’s pretty amazing. I also saw Paris Is Burning by Jennie Livingston, also about Queer party culture and also in New York too and I was just like I really want to be a part of this.
I believe my sophomore year [of collage] I think in the spring time I was taking a class and teacher said if we have any personal work to bring it in and we will all look at it. So I showed my work, which at the time was mostly nudes based on my friends and there was another individual who showed her work and she shot underground parties, not necessarily in the Queer scene, just unground parties. I saw her work and was just like wow how do I go to these and how do I find these since if you are outside of the underground scene it can be kind of hard to navigate. She told me about one party and I went to that one. I think it ended at 12 o’clock but I wasn’t done parting and like I was talking to everyone at that party and asked them where the next party is. They were like there is another party like 20 minutes away. So, I went to that one, had to pay $80 to get in because I was just like I don’t give a fuck I need to go here.
So I got inside the club and meet all of these beautiful people and started following them. Then I just saw all the different thing. This party is also how I got into my commercial work. I met one artist, Jesse Saint John I had listened to his music back in high school and he is a queer artist. He also works all sorts of huge artists, like he has worked with Brittany spears, he works on black swan, he did Lizzo’s Truth Hurts thing. So, he’s very well connected. I fan girled over him and he was like let’s stay connected. He allowed me to shoot him for my first concert and my first music video. I feel like my work and the underground community is all interwoven together.
Also a little quote from Brookyln from RuPual’s drag race, she’s like, “Afterhours are the new networking events” and I feel like that is extremely true for my work just because all the creative go to these unique underground experiences and are all Queer.
Timothy: Ok great that answers a lot and works well with my next question. It seems like all the subjects in both the commercial and personal work really feel at home and you seem to really connect with them. Are they your friends or are you just the personable? I think it’s clear that you are so genuine that it makes sense that you are in these spaces documenting them. Do you have any other feelings about that?
Deonté: First I’d love to thank you so much for seeing that in my work. It really means a lot that it comes off that way from my interactions with people. When I am working in a night club space they normally are not my friends. At least when I first started they were not my friends and the majority of them aren’t but now I’ll run into friends that I have run into there multiple times and they have become my friends. If I’m working with a celebrity then I have the opportunity to look them up, read their interviews, and also just familiarize myself with their work. So I kind of understand their vibe and energy going into it. Also, I’ll have a couple of talking points just to let them know I acknowledge you and I am aware of who you are and what you enjoy and like we can talk about this to break the ice.
In a club setting, I literally will just walk up and be like, “Oh my god, You are so beautiful. I love your outfit. Would you feel comfortable if I take your picture?” Nine times out of ten they are like, “ya” because when people go to these spaces they want to be seen and being seen is an aspect of it. When someone acknowledges their beauty and creativity, especially in a genuine way, then they respect that and see that.
When I’m shooting, both for celebrities and people in the clubs, I always try to give them energy as well. It’s boring when they are like posing and doing all this crazy stuff and the photographer is just like click, click, click. When I am doing it I am like, “Oh my god, you look fucking amazing, let me go down here and here. You want to take a look so you can see how beautiful I think you are?” so it’s a real collaborative experience as well.
In terms of working with nudes, I think I have to be more intentional about the way I work. Like the most recent shoot that I just did with @thousanddollarplate_ in Brooklyn (pictured above). We did a nude shoot which hadn’t been previously discussed but they were open to it. So, like one thing I’ll do is ask if it would make them more comfortable I can take off my clothes too just to distance ourselves from the power dynamic of me being clothed and you not being clothed. Also, I make sure they know that we can go through this entire shoot and you [the subject] can go through all of the images and I can get you’re ok on them. If you feel uncomfortable with any of them or all of them, I won’t feel some type of way, we can delete them because I want you to feel as comfortable as possible.
I also try to check in as much as much as I can throughout the shoot. Just being like, “How are you doing? Do you need any water? Is this OK? Are you still ok to continue?” because if I am really vibing I could just shoot for a really long time. I have to be aware that this is amazing but I need to be aware of their time. If it’s in an underground setting I’ll still give them my full energy but I’ll try and ready all my camera settings beforehand so I can walk up to them, do my introductions, and shoot pretty quickly so that I don’t take up too much of their time.
Timothy: Recently you have started, in your Negatives series, started editing the color of the portraits quite extremely. What lead you to doing this?
Deonté: One thing I’m sad about leaving university is that I didn’t get the chance to take a color theory class because I feel that if I were to take one that is something that would definitely influence and inform my work. In terms of doing more extreme colors, I remember having a conversation with Amir Zaki, who is an amazing professor and I love him so much. He kind of didn’t necessarily like my work but he is a professor who doesn’t really like portraits to begin with.
In terms of my inverted colorized images he said it was kind of gimmicky and something anyone could do. In my opinion, it’s really not easy to do. Like if I have twenty photos that look amazing as regular images and I already give them this high status if I invert them sometimes they won’t work regardless of what I do. It has to be based on feeling. I did it to prove him wrong and prove that its more of a process instead of me just slapping a sticker on it and calling it cool. So, when I do go in I try to be aware of ways to make it more uniquely done so that way it’s a little harder for someone to recreate instead of just going into Photoshop and inverting the images and being done.
Timothy: You spoke to this a little earlier but I have always loved how your work has always played with the societal “norms” of gender. How is it that you came to do this and what are you trying to say by doing this?
Deonté: That’s also been a really huge question for me as an artist and thinking about other artists’ work. Like how did they think about all of these different things people pick apart in their work beforehand, sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. A simple example would be Mapplethorpe. Do you remember his one image where it is a black man and a white man and like the white man is in front of the camera and he rest his head on the black man’s shoulder?
Timothy: Yes, its Ken Moody and Robert Sherman.
Deonté: Yeah so, a lot of art critics come away from it saying like all these different things like, oh the white man is in front so this means this or the neck is this way or the way they are looking means all these different meanings. I saw in one of the documentaries, Ken Moody was talking about it and said that there was nothing deep about it, that it just worked better that way.
In doing my work I do try to think conceptual but in terms of gender norms they just happen to be the people I work with. Also for myself, I identify as a cis-gen male but I do notice that I am androgynous and that I do have a female form. So, I really enjoy working with people that are like that. I feel like it also helps with my self-portrait. Like I remember hearing about how every work an artist does is kinda a self-portrait. These playing with gender norms kind of reflects me and like how I dress. I wear high heels, I have long hair, and long nails. Like when I am wearing a mask outside its kind of hard because I don’t try and look female but people perceive me as female because of my long hair and features.
Timothy: That makes good sense, as someone for many years had long hair and many times has been mistaken for a woman I understand that and value excepting one’s self and that it might happen. Speaking to that in a different way, as you’ve spoken to being Queer and a little androgynous and that being part of work and that challenging societal norms is important. Right now, in America, and the world, we are coming to terms with how race has been a part of society. As a Black man living in America how is race part of your work? Is it a part of your work?
Deonté: Yes and no, but for the most part yes. For my underground queer nightlife research project, that I did for school, my primary focus was people of color because I wanted to hear their perspective and it relates to my own. While also doing that I needed to acknowledge another thing with gender. When I looked past my work in terms of doing the project, I wanted to get as many people that fit across the spectrum of race but I needed to acknowledge that as a gay man my gaze lands more towards photographing men. I had to be aware that I needed to photograph more female identifying individuals and different genders and body types as well.
It has been really weird in terms of commercial works because I haven’t worked with too many black artists, black queer artists. Which I would love too. Just the connections I have they primarily work with white artists. I would love to work with more black queer artists or just black artists in general. Also, I haven’t really been contacted by black artists to do work which I have found a bit interesting.
Timothy: Well I think we are wrapping up. You recently moved to New York from the greater LA area. Where would be the best way for people to follow you and your work?
Deonté: The best space for that would be my website, Nuveauriche.format.com or my Instagram, @eclectic.nomad I will be changing my website a little soon. I will be changing my website soon and it will be Deontelee.photo.
Timothy: Well thank you for that and thank you for your time. I want to leave us with something you said in a past interview. That you want your work to “linger on the viewer’s tongue” which I think is great because your work sure lingers with me and will with our readers.
Deonté: Thank you and I love you and all the people who read this interview.