Think of his daybook as a dance card, an archive of encounters, both anticipated and accidental. A girl with a neon Afro, followed by the arts patron who must be portrayed in a “manner befitting.”
Juan Pont Lezica can switch gears like a sports car. And like the prizes pulled from a magi-cian’s hat, the photo might be a bouquet or a bunny. Artistically, it is always revelatory.
Juan Pont Lezica is a photographer Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina with more than 20 years of experience in fashion, music and commercial photography. cyc studio provides graphic design, art direction, wardrobe styling, hair and make up artist, executive portraits and fine art portraits.
Juan’s story is one hard to imagine in the United States. An only son, a gifted athlete well on his way to playing professional sports, given a box of paint and brushes instead, and a nudge toward art. Juan was that young soccer star in Buenos Aires. And thirty years later, it’s clear that his parents played the right hunch.
But oil paint takes too long to dry. Photographs, on the other hand, can be seen quickly, twice—the moment they’re taken, then later, even better, as they come to life on paper.
He has created high-impact fashion, art, editorial, and commercial photography on three continents for three decades. Yet he can quickly recall the first portrait he considered a keeper. “I took pictures of a girl in a bar in Germany, portraits, very classic with beautiful grain . . . they inspired me for a long time. And that’s the key. I want to reach a point where, decade after decade, the work still looks contemporary, current. The photos after years and years are still strong.”
This article by Demetria Kalodimos – featured in The Nashville Arts Magazine
Pont Lezica has enjoyed a life as exotic as his name. At last count, he had seen 288 cities of the world. Fluent in five languages, he was hardly an ordinary tourist. Fueled with cash earned as a pioneering dance deejay, Juan left Argentina after the military coup of 1976 and caught an artis-tic spark in Europe. Formal study in lighting and technique came in Munich, Germany, where he began crafting a signature style. Work in a photo lab paid the bills, while creative currency came from his appren-ticeships to some of the top photographers in France and Germany, including Jean Paul Mann and Christopher Martin.
“(In the lab), we actually processed a lot of older material from Hollywood, transferring early format photo gels to film. I learned a lot of technical things, processing times, calibrating colors, and it’s funny, that’s not at all what I do in photography now. The technique I use now is much more simple. I’m not technical, yet I’m very detailed and demanding. If some-thing is not working, I don’t give up, I make it work. I am persistent. If I wanted to do it, I don’t see any reason why I can’t.”
Lately, Juan is poring through books at the Brentwood Library, stacks of those heavy art anthologies, loaded with even heavier subject matter. Crucifixion scenes, baroque canvases bubbling with brocade and bare-ness, iconic sculpture like Rodin’s The Kiss. The idea is to resurrect these masterpieces through photography.
“I am thinking maybe on the sculpture I will paint the models white or grey and apply plaster to make it appear like real rock, where the figure emerges. I hope to have twenty to twenty-five pieces, even detailed triptychs. No Photoshop, no shortcuts. We will recreate the scene, in a real way.”
He still won’t have to wait for the paint. Yet, in a way, the photographer is taking up the “brush” again, in an era where technology, he says, has impaired our collective eye. “People have changed their eye, their view. They don’t recognize film from digital. If I showed you a certain image today, you don’t see the subtlety. There is a new generation of young photographers who have never shot a picture on film! Digital has brought too much detail, too much perfection. Sure, there are images in high definition that are impactful, but when it comes to people, some-times you don’t want to see that much.”