Xavier Rony

Xavier Rony is a photographer, poet, musician, and friend of mine I’ve had the pure pleasure of reconnecting with this last year. His work blends the ethereal nature of organic landscapes with the warm nostalgia of people from the past.

Originally from Southern California, Xav now lives in Paris, where his father grew up. During his last visit to LA we met for a glass of wine, laughed about our college selves, and reflected on the changes in our lives since then. We lingered on the experience of change and how it influences the process of creating from the soul, taking the heaviness of life and turning it into something beautiful.

Read our conversation below:

RR: From what I remember, you started working in landscape, right? Tell me how you got started.

XR: Yeah, hmm, it’s funny I started in high school. I used to get really fucking high and go hiking by my house in Glendora. I would just get faded, faded dude. And then I just had my iPhone; it was like an iPhone 4s, whatever the fuck we had back then.

I would just be taking pictures of sunsets and sunrises. I’d be blasted and just be like, “Pretty sunsets!” But then I started making these compositions, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is cool; I like taking photos.’ I started posting things on VSCO back in 2013-2014, and my dad saw that I was getting into photography, so he gave me a camera he had. From there, I just brought that camera everywhere with me: on hikes, to school, to parties.

Then in college, I started doing more landscape stuff. I was doing beach trips until I realized I could start making money from it, so I started taking grad pics. I was shooting whatever I could; I didn't have an objective, but I knew I liked landscapes.

I remember drones started getting really fucking big, so I was like, ‘Damn, maybe I should get a drone.’ That was around 2017/2018, and then that's when things really kicked off for me. I was posting on Instagram and doing this other bullshit to keep an image, I guess, but it was at that same time I started shooting my travel.

I started doing my drone photography, traveling, doing cityscapes—doing illegal shit where you couldn't fly a drone, like over the Eiffel Tower, in Barcelona, and over the US Bank Building in Downtown LA. That's what got me in the photo game, if that makes sense, but after a while, I felt like my work became very sterile.

So then, I started trying to document more people by doing more portraits, and at the same time, I started working more in film. I just shot on black and white film for a year, from 2018 to 2019. On film, I was experimenting, getting inspired, buying photo books, and getting back down to the basics after being in such a high-tech environment with drones and digital cameras.

I think that gave me a really good foundation of what perfection was to me for a photo. Landscape is a very nitpicky, detail-oriented discipline, so I took that background and brought it to portraiture and film, and it mixed very well with the new work I was creating.

Fast forward some years now, I’m still shooting film, doing artist portraits, some shows, working with agencies, models, clothing brands, whatever—in my personal work, I mix lots of ethereal landscapes and abstract imagery and combine them with very naturally lit portraits. It's a very human, very warm, very comfortable image to look at. That's the vibe I go for because I like comfort; it's very nostalgic almost. I’m very nostalgic; I feel very melancholy a lot, so I think that feeling is transferred into my work.

RR: So when you do things for yourself, do you feel like you still lean into landscape?

XR: I don't think so. I think now I'm at a point where I could shoot whatever. I miss shooting landscapes sometimes, and flying a drone is all very fun, but now I feel more balanced where I'm not just shooting landscape imagery because it looks cool and it's going to get a thousand likes on Instagram, whatever.

Now I'm telling stories through people, through my friends, my family, people I meet. It's more human, and that's what drives me more—the process rather than “Sick Drone Banger #DroneOfTheDay” shit like that. Now I'm way more into how I convey my story, my past, your story, your past, etc. That’s definitely the direction I’ve been going for the last year or two.

RR: Do you find inspiration from other photographers, or do you think it's more about, like you were saying, your story and the people you're getting to know?

XR: Yeah, it's interesting because I’d say growing up and through college, the Age of Instagram has inspo everywhere; you go on Pinterest, it's inspo, inspo. You don't even know who created it. Sometimes it's just a sick image.

I’d say what inspires me most, especially now since I do a lot of different media; I do photography, I write, I make music. I’d say what inspires me most is just my life experience: people passing away, relationships broken, fucking up in life, losing this, losing that, gaining this, gaining that—that's my biggest inspiration because that's what tells me what project to work on, almost like a coping mechanism.

You lose your grandfather, for instance; it's like how can I turn that into something beautiful that not only respects him and pays homage to him, but it can feed yourself as well and heal that person inside.

RR: Are you working on your own artist book right now?

XR: Yeah, so I'm planning on releasing my first book and doing a show back in Paris next spring. My idea is called, “Hope is a Seed That Never Grows,” and basically, it's a collection of writing I did, mostly poetry, and then images from a very specific time in my life from late 2023 to like three months ago. I was in a very intense relationship with a person, and it documents the before, during, and after of a contemporary relationship.

It describes how I met someone before I moved to Paris, and we had 9 months together, and then I moved, and things slowly started to fall apart. The writing conveys that; it's very seasonal with the photos and the writing.

RR: That sounds beautiful.

XR: Yeah, it's deeply personal, so it takes me a while to go through all the writing and photography. I'm excited because I’ve always shot the moments I'm in, but I've never tried to tell an actual story from a long period of time. I have a few other plans for the year; with my grandfather passing, I have a project for that. A bunch of other stuff, shit falls off. If I get bored of photo, I write; if I get bored of writing, I create music. It's a circle; I'm very lucky to be able to maintain those passions of mine.

I'm happy to finally be doing something more long-form, and it's something I never really thought about until one day I was just like, damn, I've been writing about this girl and giving her poems—you know, lovey-dovey shit. I'm a lover boy; I don’t give a fuck!

I'm sensitive; I'm emotional, and I think that's what makes people great artists as well—being sensitive and open with their emotions.

RR: That shit is so hard; it feels so terrible, but you're right!

XR: It's awful, but that's where amazing, beautifully sad work comes from. Writing from the depths of your fucking soul; it’s heavy. You doubt and doubt yourself, but you just have to say fuck whoever sees your work. Do it for you, and if they like it, then it's a bonus.