Meet Rey Londres | Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rey Londres and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rey, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
I’ve had to undergo my own journey of growth and expansion, riddled with unlearning foreign expectations and stopping the process of internalization so many of us fall prey to. I now shoot portraits which coalesce what I’ve learned personally and professionally into a healing process I like to call a collective reimagining. I want to show subjects an image they did not expect, to help transform and rid the ego of alien standards, and show each subject as the radiant powerful being they truly are.

I also believe I am changing history with the way I capture people, which is why I have decided to give everyone access to my talents as a pay what you can model that invites collaboration and creativity from every part of the social spectrum. I believe everyone should have this honor, the possibility for re-imagination, for sustainable self image, for gratuitous self-indulgence. Everyone deserves to be my model, and that is why I hold no barrier of entry to my art making. After going to art school I realized just how much gatekeeping stifles creativity and it is my sincere hope my practice can start to shift this for my industry and the art world at large.

Everyone deserves to be in the glossy pages of the magazine, the white walls of a museum, representation matters. This is why I hope to build an expanding representational legacy for those who choose me as their photographer, one that is centered not on aesthetics or exposures but on the feelings we engage when shooting together. I hope to heal what damage our image obsessed society has done to the collective psyche and underpin every photo with the ever evolving nature of our world, the appreciation & depreciation of the visual, the constant up and down of our ego, the self and its shadow.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
We have all witnessed the ongoing battle of representation in these worlds, and I am here to heal the damage it’s done to our collective psyche. My goal is to bring about a wave of change to the traditional image, and celebrate the beauty that exists in the raw, as well as the construct, always finding a way to prioritize the human. I wish to guide the viewer of my images to question fervently and radically, what they hold as important to the image.

My practice exists as an ever more present democratization of the studio and its aesthetics. Collaboration gives agency in every step of the process, the people in front of my lens hold active gazes, defiant stances, they push back against normative standards and refuse objectification. My dedication to taking fashion images into a new realm of self-liberation is an embodied response to the ways I have seen models be exploited by our industry. I assure my sitters that any profit made from the images be divided into equal parts to assure they are not just compensated but respected. The images I take could not be the same without the community behind them.

The studio portrait has always been a sought out luxury and I plan to bring that to the masses. I had a new vision for what this field can do, and I plan on building horizontally as I bring that vision into fruition. The work I am mostly interested in is portraiture, its my single greatest passion to image people as they’ve never seen themselves before. I act as a bridge to the lens, the image and the print, they have the control over how they are represented, after all, their presence is one that needs no editing from me. Consent and recognition pulsate from every image, creating a tapestry that seeks to undo the toxic obsession with the perfect image. I hope to ground my collaborators in a sense of safety. Together, we make images that work along the lines of restoring trust in photographers, and enliven the contract of photography to something far beyond its current limits. Breaking barriers in the very click of a shutter, our collaboration becomes an encapsulation of so much more than their likeness.

My passion extends far beyond activism and photography into the embodiment of decolonized and accessible modalities of our artform. I am seeing very specific needs going unfulfilled, and we are all at a loss the longer we let it go unquestioned. Our industry deserves better. The future depends on it.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
https://www.risd.edu/news/stories/the-black-biennial-2022

I would take them to see our newest exhibition, curated by Melaine Ferdinand-King & myself.

I would take them also to eat at Knead Doughnuts, Plant City, Ceremony Cafe & Market.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
https://www.hausofglitter.org

The Haus of Glitter Dance Company + Performance Lab + Preservation Society is living in + healing with + reimagining the former Esek Hopkins Homestead (built in 1756) + Park. They are transforming the space to create work that investigates lineage; and restores the energetic center of its layered history towards Queer/Feminist BIPoC Wisdom, Healing, & Liberation. They engage communities often and create spaces where liberation reigns supreme, bringing in folks from all walks of life to heal damaging legacies of colonialism.

https://includedbyfavor.com

included is an initiative of FAVOR, a multi-disciplinary creative studio specializing in brand identity, art direction, and design. Led by award-winning designer Rene Watkins Payne, included develops communication strategies and visual messaging that enable our clients to advance their initiatives to promote social equity, human dignity, and environmental justice. Whatever the task, be it developing integrated brand assignments or consulting with in-house design and advertising teams, we conceive solutions that inspire, instruct, and often surprise.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reylondres/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reylondres/

Image Credits
Chloé Martini @chloe_martini Jordan @jordanfromla Gaelle Augustin @elletheemodel Rae Woods @sensitive.black.hottie Mariah Viman @mariahalexvinman Haus of Glitter @hausofglitterdanceco Iyosayi Aghedo @iyo.aghedo Assi Lakin Coulibaly @_sitaaa27