The amazing Shane Lavalette

The name Shane Lavalette came on my radar when he was a still BFA student at Tufts University (in partnership with The School of the Museum of Fine Arts) in Boston. Shane set himself apart by creating an innovative publication, Lay Flat 01-Remain in Light. Presented as individual prints that were at the same time beautiful and unpretentious, this publication is one that I still share with students. Lay Flat continues as “a periodic journal devoted to contemporary photography in which each issue takes on a new theme and format”.

In 2009, Shane established Lavalette, an independent publishing house of limited edition photography books and multiples, in addition to the Lay Flat publications. His published works can be found throughout the world and purchased here and here.

Lay Flat 02: Meta (published by Lavalette, 2010)

In 2013, Shane was hired as the Director of Light Work, a non-profit organization in Syracuse, New York that supports support artists working in photography and digital imaging, through residencies, publications, exhibitions, and lab facilities.  Founded in 1973, Light Work has a long established reputation of providing opportunities to artists allowing them to bring their work to a new level.  In addition to the grant and residency programs, Light Work produces the excellent publication, Contact Sheet.

Shane also continues working on his own photography and opens his first solo exhibition on June 3rd in Europe, One Sun, One Shadow, at Robert Morat Galerie in Hamburg, Germany. Below are selected images from One Sun, One Shadow.

©Shane Lavalette

©Shane Lavalette

©Shane Lavalette

©Shane Lavalette

©Shane Lavalette

©Shane Lavalette

I was not alone in my excitement and appreciation of his early accomplishments and have watched his career expand into new arenas over the years. In 2013, Shane was awarded the Rising Star Award through the Griffin Museum’s Focus Awards program. Today he is an artist, curator, publisher and Director of Light Work and is a regular portfolio reviewer at events like PhotoNOLA in New Orleans, the Filter Festival of Photography in Chicago, Photolucida in Portland, or KaunasPhoto.

Shane’s photographs have been shown widely, including exhibitions at the High Museum of Art, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Aperture Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, The Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Musée de l’Elysée, in addition to being held in private and public collections. His editorial work has been published in various magazines, including The New York Times Magazine,The New Yorker, Newsweek, Esquire, Bloomberg Businessweek, Vice Magazine, The Wire, Wallpaper*, among others. He is currently based in Upstate New York.

And now, with great pleasure,  the Shane Lavalette Mixtape!

Shane Lavalette

Tell us about your growing up and what brought you to photography.

I grew up in Vermont and got interested in photography as a teenager, in part thanks to a photo class at my high school. I spent a lot of time in the black and white darkroom (we were very fortunate to have that) and looking at the handful of photobooks in the library there—Arbus, Evans, Strand, etc. I began a photoblog for sharing my early experiments with image-making then, and I started saving up what little money I had to buy photography books I would see online or in a used bookstore. This is when I started looking at color. Eggleston, Shore, Dijkstra, and so on from there. When it came time to consider what I might like to study in college, photography was the obvious choice.

Young Shane

What is your title and job description and tell us about a typical day?

First and foremost I’m a photographer and working artist, but that informs the other things I do. While in college in Boston I started a small independent publishing house and have continued to work on publishing projects with other artists through that. In 2011, I was fortunate to be offered a residency at Light Work in Syraucse, New York. In August, after a summer of travel working on a project, I spent a month at Light Work scanning and processing all of my film. The experience was transformative and my whole digital workflow changed after working with the staff in the lab. Around that time I heard of a position opening at Light Work, and took the opportunity to apply. I really didn’t expect it, but got the job and found myself moving to Syracuse a few months later, in October. It’s now been four years!

Light Work, located at the Robert B. Menschel Media Center

As the Director of Light Work, a typical day is not really a thing. Each month we have new artists visiting through our the residency program, and we regularly change exhibitions, are working on issues of Contact Sheet, and the lab facility is frequented by community members as well as used for printing jobs regionally, nationally, internationally. Every day is different and if you walk through the lab you see that in what prints are up on the viewing walls and what projects are going on in the space. While I am most passionate about curatorial/publishing projects and working with artists, I also spend quite a lot of time on grant writing and other administrative tasks that fuel our programs. Light Work provides a magic combination of time, space, money, and staff support to artists—it’s really the team effort of our great staff that makes it all possible.

Light Work entrance

Light Work Digital Lab

Light Work Artist Apartment

What are some of your proudest achievements?

I’m proud of a lot of things that I’ve done with my own work, but I’m equally fulfilled by supporting other artists and seeing good things develop for them. I was reflecting on my time at Light Work thus far and realized that we’ve easily worked with over 75 artists through the residency and exhibition programs, just in the time I’ve been here (the number is over 500 if we’re talking about the history of the organization). Their experiences, like mine, are often very significant to them and I’ve seen countless examples of artists making great strides in their careers or personally during or following their residency. I live vicariously through those moments and feel a lot of pride when I see good things happening for the artists we’ve worked with. It’s a great feeling.

Raymond Meeks Exhibition curated by Shane Lavalette

©Xaviera Simmons, Xaviera Simmons: Accumulations

What do you look for when attending a portfolio review?

While I’m really interested in seeing and hearing about an artist’s work, a portfolio review is almost more suited to getting to know the artist, the person behind the images, and simply having a good conversation. You can see so much work online, but it doesn’t replace this kind of exchange.

Shane reviewing at Photolucida in 2015

Any advice for photographers coming to a review event?

I imagine it can be nerve racking, probably a bit like speed dating, but I would encourage artists to try to take a deep breath and just share things you care about. Know why you care about them, what’s compelling you to explore the subject of your work. That makes for a good conversation. Know what you are looking for at your review and why you are talking with a particular reviewer. Be open to expressing that to them. If you review with me I might even ask, What are your goals, and how might I be able to help? It doesn’t mean I can, but it’s good for everyone to lay all that out on the table. Speaking of the table, don’t bring prints that are the size of it. Reviewers can imagine images larger, so bring a portfolio that’s easy to look at together. Time goes by quickly. Focus on one or two projects at the most. There’s nothing worse than spending a review scrambling to get through five projects and not going into any depth with any of them.

What is something unexpected that we don’t know about you?

Here’s a nerdy confession… I was really into checkers when I was in elementary school. I would play it competitively after school in the library. It’s a really simple game, but I still have a soft spot for it. I think it transports me back to being five again.

And since this is a Mixtape, what is your favorite song, band, and do you dance?

Haha. You won’t often find me dancing in the wild, but I’m known to dance around the house. Favorite song or band is too hard, but let’s see… Lately the rotation has included Peggy Honeywell, Quilt, Angel Olsen, Wye Oak, Andrew Bird, Dan Auerbach, Courtney Barnett, Nils Frahm, Jack Rose, La Luz, Jose Gonzalez, Leon Bridges, and Rodrigo Amarante.

For part two of this Mixtape, Shane would like to share the newest call for Light Work’s Artist in Residency program.