Candice Solomon in Conversation with Steven Lyon

Candice Solomon: Steven, darling, your life reads like a film already. Los Angeles, Paris, New York, fashion, cinema, the African bush, Warhol, rhinos, shadows, beauty, danger. Let us begin at the beginning. Who is Steven Lyon?

Steven Lyon: I’m a photographer, filmmaker, writer, and visual artist. I was born in Los Angeles, but my life and work have moved through many worlds: fashion, cinema, fine art, documentary, activism. I’ve never really seen those things as separate. For me, they are all connected by image, emotion, and storytelling.

Candice: Yes, yes. Not merely a photographer. A life lived through the lens, but also through instinct. You first entered the international scene in the 1980s, discovered by Andy Warhol for Interview magazine. What was that moment like?

Steven: It was extraordinary. Warhol had a way of seeing people before they fully understood themselves. Being discovered by him opened a door into a world that was glamorous, strange, fast, and very visual. I became known as a male model in the 1980s and 1990s, working in Paris, Milan, New York, and Tokyo. But even then, I was observing. I was studying photographers, directors, light, character, psychology.

Candice: So while the world was looking at your face, you were already looking back.

Steven: Exactly. I was never interested in fashion as surface alone. I was interested in what was beneath it. The tension. The mystery. The contradiction. Beauty is interesting when there is something unresolved inside it.

Candice: That is deliciously true. Beauty without tension is decoration. You eventually moved behind the camera, and Paris became a kind of visual laboratory for you. What did Paris give you?

Steven: Paris gave me time, atmosphere, and history. I lived there for more than two decades, and it shaped my eye. The city has a cinematic quality: the shadows, the architecture, the restraint, the sense of memory. I was deeply influenced by film noir, European cinema, and German Expressionism. Those influences became part of my visual language.

Candice: Your images do not simply sit there. They brood. They seduce. They withhold. There is always a story just outside the frame.

Steven: That’s important to me. I want an image to feel like a fragment of a larger story. Not everything should be explained. Some of the most powerful images hold back. They allow the viewer to enter with their own memory, their own longing, their own questions.

Candice: You have photographed fashion, portraiture, landscapes, wildlife, and the nude, yet the work feels remarkably consistent. What binds all of these subjects together?

Steven: Atmosphere. Emotional truth. I approach everything with the same intention, whether it’s a portrait, a landscape, a nude, or an animal in the wild. I’m looking for presence. I’m looking for something honest. The subject changes, but the emotional language remains the same.

Candice: And now comes the book: ”ARTIST OF LIGHT”. Even the title has a kind of cinematic inevitability. Tell me about it.

Steven: “ARTIST OF LIGHT” is my first major coffee table monograph. It’s being proofed in Germany now. I conceived, designed, and art directed the entire book myself. It brings together more than thirty years of work: fashion, portraits, fine art nudes, landscapes, wildlife, and cinematic imagery.

Candice: A self-portrait without being a self-portrait.

Steven: In many ways, yes. It reflects my evolution as an artist. It also shows that the different parts of my work were never separate. They were always part of the same visual and emotional world.

Candice: The first edition is not simply a book, correct? It is an object.

Steven: Yes. The initial release will be a signed limited collector’s edition accompanied by an original platinum print. I wanted it to feel like a true art object, something for collectors and patrons. A broader edition will follow later so the work can reach a wider audience.

Candice: That is very important. First the rare object, then the wider invitation. Now, Steven, we must talk about Africa. Your documentary, “A Journey That Matters”, is not a polite wildlife film, is it?

Steven: No, it isn’t. I spent more than a decade working on it. The film examines poaching, corruption, and the extinction crisis surrounding the rhinoceros. It became deeply personal. I spent months on foot in the African bush and logged more than 1,000 kilometers while making the film.

Candice: That is not observation from a distance. That is physical commitment.

Steven: It had to be. I didn’t want to make a sanitized documentary. I wanted to confront the reality directly. The subject demanded that. The story is not just about animals. It’s about people, greed, survival, violence, indifference, and responsibility.

Candice: The rhinoceros becomes a mirror.

Steven: Yes. It reflects something about us. How we treat the vulnerable. How we respond when beauty is being destroyed in front of us. The film is about extinction, but it’s also about conscience.

Candice: In 2013, you founded Lyonheart Love. What was the impulse behind that?

Steven: I wanted to create a nonprofit that could use art and film as vehicles for awareness, activism, and humanitarian engagement. It became the umbrella for “A Journey That Matters” and later projects, including “THE FREEDOM DROP”, which was created in support of Ukraine.

Candice: Art as witness. Art as action. Not merely the gorgeous thing on the wall.