Photographer balances his commercial work with his artistic leanings
By JOHN PRZYBYS
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Carlo Roncancio always was an artistic kid, but it wasn't until he appropriated his brother's camera that he found his true creative path.

It all worked out, though. That act of juvenile petty larceny was just the nudge Roncancio needed to ultimately carve out a career as a fashion and fine-art photographer.

Roncancio, 40, was born in Colombia but immigrated with his family to the United States when he was just a kid.

'Why does anybody immigrate to America? Opportunities," he says. "My parents had a clothing store and did clothing manufacturing, and we all moved to New York."

The family moved to New York City first, and then to upstate New York, where Roncancio spent most of his childhood.

Roncancio says he didn't know English, but found he could relate to his new world visually.

"I didn't know how to read, so I looked at pictures and, visually, I became very astute," he says. "I looked at photos and I looked at National Geographic."

So it's not surprising that Roncancio, who now lives in Las Vegas, became a "very artsy" kid.

"I was always painting. I was always drawing murals on the wall," he says. "Either weekly or monthly my whole room was changed. I'd do a Victorian theme or a Southwestern theme or a country theme."

He laughs. 'I was the most bizarre kid."

Roncancio's brother was a pretty good amateur photographer. He also played soccer and was gone on trips with the team for days at a time.

When Roncancio was 13, he began borrowing his brother's camera while the older sibling was away.

"He'd always tell me to stay away from the camera," Roncancio says, but "technical things always fascinated me. I thought I could take them apart and put them back together, and I never could."

"So my brother said, `Don't touch it,' and, of course, I started to, because when they'd say, `No, no,' I'd say, `Yes, yes.' "

Roncancio would explore his upstate New York town, taking photos of whatever appealed to him.

"It was a real manual 35 mm, and I didn't know what the hell I was doing," he says. "I would experiment, really, and basically leave it on the same settings he left it on. It took me a half-day to learn how to load it, and then I would just click away.

"I had a lot of exposed film, a lot of batches of bad film. Then I finally got to know it and started (shooting) some real cool stuff.

"I would photograph all the old Victorian homes and the beautiful gardens, and old people always fascinated me. I started documenting what I saw in my own world."

But, after about six months, "the shutter had broken or something," Roncancio says, and his brother "knew that someone had been messing with the camera."

"He went into my room, and underneath my bed I had a box full of photos I had taken and had developed. He actually scolded me, and I think he hit me on the head a few times," Roncancio says, smiling. "And then he said, `You're going to make a much better photographer than I would,' and he actually gave me the camera as a gift. So he was my first sponsor."

It wasn't until his senior year of high school that Roncancio took his first formal photography class.

"I think it was one semester, and it was only because I had such encouragement from a girlfriend of mine who was the most creative person," he says. "She opened up my eyes to just being creative and allowing myself to accept that creative part of myself."

Still, Roncancio didn't imagine pursuing a career as a photographer.

"I thought being a photographer wasn't something that can be practical," he says. "I thought it was just fun, but not something you can make a lot of money at."

Instead, Ronancio says, "I always wanted to help people, so I thought I would be a psychologist or a social worker."

When Roncancio went to college, he spent a few years majoring in such subjects as sociology, psychology and criminal justice. He even studied architecture during his years of on-and-off schooling.

But all along the way, he says, "I'd take some art, whether it was ceramics or painting or drawing. I was always drawn to the arts. But, believe it or not, I was terrified about even thinking about becoming a photographer."

Roncancio finally decided to pursue art and studied at schools in Houston and California during the next few years. After moving to California and marrying at age 20, he also took a few business classes and fell into an accidental career as an interior designer.

"I started doing interior design for a friend and started a business," he explains. "It really went well."

But, several years later, "the marriage started failing and my business started failing," Roncancio says.

So, Roncancio says he started working as a free-lance photographer in the movie industry, shooting stills and celebrities' head shots.

"I really loved that, but I started to get in with the wrong crowd (and) a lot of young celebrities that partied," he says.

"I didn't know what partying was, because I had been married 11 years, and they taught me what partying was."

Around the same time, Roncancio began shooting photos for no other reason than to fulfill his own creative desires.

"I was really just shooting because it was the only way I could interpret my surroundings," he says. "I started doing a lot of fine-art work.

"That was the first time I was able to say, `Oh my God, I can really feel something important when I'm shooting this particular person or object,' whatever it was, because I was interpreting my surroundings through my art."

Nine years ago, Roncancio moved to Las Vegas. "I ended up leaving Los Angeles when I was overwhelmed with Los Angeles," he explains. "I really got to the point where I felt I was burned out on the scene."

"A friend of mine hired me as entertainment director of a club here," Roncancio says. "I did well with that, but I realized I didn't want to do that."

So, Roncancio opened his own photography studio here and, since then, has supported himself by shooting fashion layouts, modeling portfolios, head shots, promotional material and, he admits, even the occasional wedding.

"I'm probably the most expensive wedding photographer (in town)," he says. "My weddings start at five grand.

"Then, I have like three or four big clients a year that really make the difference in my income. Without them, I really couldn't survive."

Roncancio says he doesn't see himself as a conventional studio photographer, but, rather, as "an artist who is making a living as a photographer."

And, as proud as he is of his fashion work and his work with Las Vegas entertainers, Roncancio's pet project is a collection of his own fine-art photographs that he hopes to see published in a year or so.

"The fine art (work) was always something I did for myself, for my own sanity," he explains.

"I feel that, now, I have clarity and will be able to see what I've done during the last 10 years on the fine-art level and really put it into a book to express my feelings from the '60s to now."

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