Photo Diary: Chicago Photographer Devon Thomas Finds Beauty in the Overlooked
CHICAGO-BASED CREATIVE — Devon Thomas is an avid curator of the invisible. Thinking of photography as a form of curation rather than creation, her work seems to let her subjects tell their own story. As a photographer, she is unique in the sense that she cultivates beauty in things many of our eyes tend to wash over. Authentic and raw, several of her muses come from street photography and are a reflection of her own environment as a college student. The elderly, the wallflowers, the anonymous passersby on the street — Thomas has found a niche in photographing those who often don’t appear in front of the lens.
Drawn to people’s energy, she tries to be intuitive when finding subjects; she is adept at searching out people with stories to tell. Thomas is a strong advocate for embracing the limitations of your medium and environment, capturing the beauty in the minutia of the everyday with a simple point and shoot camera. In addition to her work with street photography, Thomas has found a home in Chicago’s vibrant indie music scene. Jumping into concert photography in February, she has developed an impressive portfolio of dynamic, emotive photographs capturing the essence of this scene. It’s apparent she’s very adept at cultivating a story and a narrative through her work.
Read on below to hear more about her journey as a budding creative and explore her dynamic portfolio.
LUNA: I’d love to hear a little bit about your journey with photography, how you got started, and what you're up to now.
THOMAS: Yeah! I'm very new to photography, in a sense. At the same time, I feel like I've been developing my skills applicable to photography for a really long time. I started taking pictures with a digital camera, like a DSLR camera, when I was a senior in high school. It's something I wanted to do a lot earlier, but I was super busy — I was doing a lot of music and didn't really see myself as an artist, especially not a visual artist since most of my creative experience was in music. It was something that I didn't think about doing too hard until last year [when] I bought my first film camera. It's a Nikon One Touch Zoom 90. I actually love this camera. It's kind of a random camera — a lot of point and shoots have cult followings [and] that's not this camera, but I really like it. From literally spring of last year to now I've had this weird trajectory with photography where it's turned into “a thing” — like, people are asking me to shoot for them now, and it's become a real part of my life outside of just being a random hobby.
February of this year, when I kind of fell into this photography gig, I reached out to this local blog that had done a write-up on my partner, because he’s a musician. They ended up using one of my pictures that he had posted on Instagram, so I just emailed them and was like, “Hey, thanks, that was really cool of you.” And then they responded and they were like, “Yeah, we're actually starting this new series that's based more on photography, and it'd be cool if you could shoot for us.” What I didn't say was that I had literally no experience shooting concert photography at all. After agreeing to do it I [knew I] needed to acquire a camera [I could use to] shoot concerts, because you can't really shoot concerts with a point and shoot. So that's when I started shooting manual photography. Now I just keep getting asked to shoot people at shows. So that's kind of become a niche of mine, concert photography.
I've also been doing a lot of traveling, so I've kind of delved into street photography in a very intentional way that I didn't plan on. It's been a very nonlinear trajectory, and I've really enjoyed that about it. I have always had a lot of artistic aspirations. I've always thought of myself as a creative but not necessarily an artist. I feel like that's a hard differentiation to understand unless you've been in that mentality. But I'm just such a perfectionist — I always have been, to where I've never really fully dove into a medium in a serious way, especially a visual medium, because I just have never felt like I had the time and had never really felt like I nurtured those skills. Photography has helped me break out of that mentality a lot because my approach in photography is so opposite of that. It’s intentional, but it's by no means calculated in the way that other mediums have been for me. And that's really helped me embrace myself as an artist and even just accept that I am actually an artist. So take that, impostor syndrome.
LUNA: I love that! You said you've been doing some street photography — I'd love to hear more about that.
THOMAS: A lot of the context that I've shot in really just comes down to what environments are around me. As I said, I'm part of and kind of adjacent to this musical community in Chicago, which has gotten me into shooting concerts. The street photography is sort of more of a reflection of my everyday life and perspective. First of all, I'm a huge walker — I walk everywhere — and part of that is because I don't know how to drive and I don't have a license. So I think that it wasn't necessarily a planned thing where I said, “I'm going to be a street photographer,” but where I am often is on the street as a pedestrian. So that's just opened up a lot of opportunities for me to catch moments that I wouldn't otherwise. I really like that about street photography. There's something that feels authentic about capturing something that is an everyday minutia.
I think that also getting into street photography was partially due, honestly, to the specific equipment that I had and have at the time, which is this camera. Point and shoots are just great for capturing street photography — I think that they're super underrated in that sense. I'm a big advocate of embracing limitations of the medium. So I think that having only a point shoot camera opens me up to doing a specific type of photography in a way, because I'm not going to do editorial shots with the point and shoot, could I?
Theoretically yes, but it feels like it wants to live more out on the street than in a studio. So I think that the equipment sort of brought me to the medium, and my lifestyle reflected that medium well. I've found this synergy with street photography that I really like, and that makes me feel very in the moment and in the lived world. The limitation of my environment is also that I'm not really in an everyday or frequent environment that's particularly elevated above just my daily life. I'm a student, I work, I'm a creative, I'm always on the go. So street photography just fits into that mold.
LUNA: I'd love to hear a little bit more about your inspirations or your muses when it comes to photography.
THOMAS: I love taking pictures of older people because you just do not see them enough in media today. There's something about seeing a really good photo of an old person that almost inherently makes it better and more unique, just by virtue of it being an older person. When you open up a magazine or when you're on Instagram, for every one picture of someone who's 70 there's, like, 50 pictures of some 25-year-old.
I love taking pictures of people where you can tell they have a story just from looking at them. Sometimes that comes down to something like how they look, how they move, what their style is. Just people who have specific essences, and for me that's often older people, and specifically older women, because I'm super obsessed with [them] in the sense that what it means to be a woman has changed so much in our culture. It feels comforting to talk to older women and photograph them and think, “Okay, they did it. I can do it.”
I'm super drawn to people's energy. So whether that's someone's style or just when you're in a room with a person and you can feel their energy sort of pulling you in that direction, those are often the people that I like to take pictures of. It often tends to be the more quiet introspective person, because if they won't tell me what they're thinking it makes me drawn towards them and makes me want to capture them just existing. And maybe I can look at that later and infer things about who they are.
LUNA: Are there any projects you're excited for in the near future, anything you want to experiment with more?
THOMAS: Definitely. There are so many ideas that I have for the next year or so. I think that maybe my issue is that I have so many ideas. I love concert photography and I want to get better at it. But I also want to branch out and maybe try editorial work as well. I'm very interested in what that would look like on film. But I definitely also want to explore the digital medium. I love film, and I think that it's very core to my perspective. I think that it's very much a reflection of real life; there's the texture of film that kind of gives this tangibility to it. But I think as I grow in my photography, I'll want to explore more surrealist concepts as well, and that might push me into the digital world too.
In terms of projects, I'm really interested in making a photo book. I've just very recently started to develop a concept of what that could look like for me. In terms of my creativity writ large, I think that why photography has resonated with me in an unexpected way is because I'm very interested in curation and creative direction. I don't know if this is a hot take, but I think photography in a way is like a tangible form of curation.
When I'm taking a photo of someone, [it’s not like] if I'm painting someone or something from scratch and the essence is me, I'm creating the essence. But in the medium of photography, I'm curating the essence. I'm creating parts of it, but the actual person or subject is doing something, and I'm capturing a moment. So I think I would like to develop off that natural instinct for curation and maybe start getting into some type of exhibit curation, or even just getting really intentional about curating my own work and launching off into that realm via my own content, my own art.
I'm definitely interested in creative direction. I just want to expand my creative universe. I very much intend on creating limitations for myself creatively so that I can keep making mistakes, even as I grow technically as a photographer. I'd like for serendipity to still play a role even if I get a lot better photography on a technical level.
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