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Jonathan Levinson is no stranger to shooting intimate personal projects. The Mexico-based photographer has frequently experienced the hardships and challenges that come along with exploring sensitive, difficult issues and approaching people who are often exploited, voiceless, and mistrusting. However, being able to focus on the topics he cares most about keeps him going back.
Jonathan picked up his camera and hit the road again to photograph Adam Stephens and Tyson Vogel of the band Two Gallants, which also happens to be made up of two of his closest friends.
I’ve known these guys since pre-school and kindergarten, and have always been in awe of how devoted they are to their music. I wanted to do a project about how decidedly unglamorous their lives are and the emotional toll it takes on the individuals.
Jonathan’s biggest mentors in photography have always stressed intimacy and getting beyond the easy pictures, so he was eager to spend a month on the road with uninhibited access to document his closest friends.
A piece of advice I was given once was when you reach that point when you’re restless, hungry, tired and think you have what you need or you want to leave, that’s when you need to stay. That’s when people forget you’re there and you can go even deeper. And it’s true, it always pays off.
With that in mind, Jonathan joined Two Gallants on the road to capture the highs and lows of a life devoted to music, knowing full well that he’d be on the job 24/7 for a month with no escape and little privacy.
Although Jonathan was already friends with Adam and Tyson, he found it uncomfortable to be so intimate with the musicians at first. He experienced a side of their relationship he had not seen before, as they allowed him a closer look into a closely guarded friendship.
No moment was off limits, and Jonathan recalled a point early on in the trip where Adam and Tyson had a disagreement.
I was reluctant to photograph it and afterwards I mentioned that to one of them and he said, “That’s part of the story, right?” I realized not only did they get what I was doing but they were more comfortable than I was.
Balancing friendship with documenting the band was one of Jonathan’s biggest challenges during the project. While his original instinct was to protect his friends and avoid documenting raw moments on camera, he realized that those moments made the most powerful images. After he found a balance between friend and documentarian, it paid off in the intimacy of the work.
During the shoot, Jonathan was also wary of falling into clichés and overdone shots. He spoke with a few editors and photographers to give him some advice along the way, including Sacha Lecca at Rolling Stone and Mark Murrmann at Mother Jones. They both provided an outside perspective and had some great insight along the way.
About halfway through the project nothing felt new anymore. I was shooting every day and was exhausted, I was having trouble seeing new images to shoot. I had a conversation with a mentor who said now is the time to experiment, focus on shooting adjectives instead. I started looking for those adjectives and it really changed the way I saw my surroundings.
Aside from a small, terrifying incident where Jonathan almost crashed a drone on stage, documenting the musicians went fairly smoothly and yielded striking results.
On the road, Jonathan created a multimedia documentary of the band in addition to the still images. He submitted the video to the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and was pleased at its acceptance into the event. You can view the video, titled “Seems Like Home,” on Jonathan’s site.
Jonathan hopes to continue shooting Adam and Tyson whenever the opportunity arises. He’s also interested in writing about how success in music is in a period of redefinition, examining the artists of today with the artists of previous decades.
To view more of Jonathan’s work, visit jlevinsonphoto.com.