We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Neil Constantine a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Neil, appreciate you joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

It’s August of 2020. The pandemic is raging, COVID injected chaos into everything in the United States and world. I had lost my job, as had my artisan wife Niceli Portugal, and countless others we knew. Daily life then a wondering ship at sea, searching for shore. As summer rolled through, tragedy struck as COVID claimed Niceli’s Grandfather in Peru.

Before this occurred we had spoken of possibly mounting a road trip to be outside the city for a moment. Once loss had made its way round, we decided the next day to take a road trip through the U.S. Traversing what we could by car. To see, connect with more of a land that both of us didn’t really know beyond stories and images. To better understand a land that at the time was divided openly between the selfless and selfish, the progressive and fascistic.

It was the year of an election under a president that revealed more and more their undemocratic and human rights violating actions day in and out. A back sliding that was happening, that I knew wasn’t representative of the majority. Our travels would take us through 27 states. We camped where able to explore while surrealistically being in a form of isolation due to the pandemic. Documenting the beauty of a land while trying to connect with communities kept 6 feet apart or ideologically separated elsewhere.

A polarized land of opportunity we sought greater peace and understanding from. We knew not our route or time we would stop. Our circumstances allowed us to take on such a challenge. For 8 weeks we drove the roads, meeting landscape after landscape sculpted by time and humanity. Seeing cities, towns touched and transformed by covid, the elections and protests of that summer after the murder of George Floyd and more.

I truly did not have the means or experience and we put ourselves in precarious situations to experience what we did. Not a single regret is felt as the trip gave a view of the bigger picture of existing, of expanding our hearts and minds, reminding us of who we are, but how great this world and its people, no matter how conflicted and among chaos, can be.

With my documentation, I am working towards releasing a book to showcase my photography of the pandemic, protests and the road trip that followed. The road trip illuminated that we must push ourselves into zones of discovery that helps build bridges to others even if isolated by disease, politics or whatever else tries to burden our spirit or rights. That progress still occurs even if forces that don’t want an equitable equality for all are obstructing the people’s way.

Neil, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My life began in Chester, Virginia, a short distance from Richmond, VA. The journey weaved through writing, music, standup, before eventually landing in the photography and painting presently. I wouldn’t become immersed in photography or painting until after moving to New York. I wanted to do something that helped with my work in standup. Creativity had always brought me peace, but for the first time, capturing the world and people through a lens gave me feelings and access to abilities I never thought to possess. I felt a sense of tranquility when holding a camera or paint brush in my hands. A beauty of the world I had seen in my peripheral appeared now before me. Something about this had me feel as though I could do what I wanted to do passionately and as a career through life.

With photography I strive to be immersed in any space I am in to photograph the world or persons in moments as candidly, honestly as possible. My focus has me document events around the city, countries and venues. To be able to translate the life into still moments that connect others or inspires thrills me. Whether capturing weddings, protests, riots, landscapes or various live or life events, there’s beauty abound that others should witness. I take documenting in a more journalistic way of trying to approach from what the facts present rather than trying to portray something other. Doesn’t mean I don’t experiment in my work, only that the truth of the person or moment comes first.

In painting, I embrace instinct more than anything. Using varied mediums to position colors that touch upon the political to simply being when I finish striking the surface. I build worlds with radical movements. Maybe there will be a set way I do things later, but much of my works are reactions to my feelings or world events at the time. Just like my photography, when that wave comes, I ride it to shore.

Both mediums bring a balance, and in both, I feel my work possesses meaning and process that seeks to be more helpful than hurtful. My artistic olive branches provide another route to being and growing.

I feel great pride when I see a person light up or be stopped in their tracks when looking at my work. With the click of a camera or stroke of a brush, I love allowing others a way to pause the world, even if just a moment. When helping with and documenting refugees in NYC and Greece, it’s something else to be able to to share and help people create art. Out of everything I do, I can’t wait to do more workin this area in the future

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Trying to stay on a path that leans more selfless than selfish with the arts or life. I know how vague that sounds, but part of existing is liberating ourselves daily to then attempt to liberate others. This isn’t to say to put or always put yourself first. There is no set way no matter the amount of success in a particular direction. We may find relief, we must also pass these releases on or be ready to part ways with the same if it comes to be that a way destroys more than it creates. Sometimes what we do must be done with eyes closed, as long as we educate, our kindness will rise and evolve as the conversations among us collide and embrace.

That’s a beauty in living, each day invites you to create more time for others later. Our time is finite. And to capture a semblance of being to hopefully further anything is wondrous. It is why I enjoy making art that may contain the political or capturing the glow of joy in a party, the inspiration of protests, to the calm wash of water on surfaces and much more. Our agency, my agency at least, is to help provide some escape to ponder the world at hand. And it is what I will continue to try and better everyday.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

First and foremost, society has to fund education more at every level. We unfortunately live in a era where our taxes go more and more to a military and police industrial complex in the USA. Education has been gutted for decades and then politicians complain that public education isn’t working as they take more of their funding. They saw a leg, then propose there being no chair or a high price for a seat at the table. Education is the confrontation power knows will undo it’s exploitation that may exist. Properly funded schools will lend themselves to the arts more, which then helps people find more ways to express themselves and better retain or gather information. I am not saying what should be defunded, just wouldn’t hurt to re-fund the people more and education is a starting point at least.

I am thankful for the access to the arts I had even if the school in my area doesn’t teach what the US truly was, is and could be better at being. Art isn’t the solution for everything. It is a weapon we too often let be diminished by those who see the system to exploit for profit. Art invites the conversation of what it is to be. It is a meeting point for the radical, antiquated and the in between to be in the same space. So often we assume which of those three we are when in front of or creating, and with any art form, the discovery of who we really are surprises us. Like any art, our feelings in creation of or viewing are priceless and the heads of state look for the short term rich. The well being of our mental means nothing to the decimal point looking to expand for expanding’s sake.

Art will always find a way, history shows this, but since we live in a system of money, we must find ways to value art more than assume its freeness. Our ability to express should have endless, accesible outlets. Our people who dedicate to specifically the arts should not have to struggle as too many do. The fight for education is long, so give money at those friends or persons at markets, online, randomly, etc. Even if you can’t afford an artist’s work yet, a donation to them by cash or Venmo can be everything. Dreams need finance all the same. Until we find a better way to exchange social contracts, donate when able while also voting and defending those that want to elevate the arts beyond words with actions.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.allaroundimages.com
• Instagram: @neilconstantine

Image Credits
Personal photo taken by (ig) @louneymor