One of the artists featured in the upcoming fine art photography exhibition, Photofest, is Jonte Koonce, a Tallahassee-born and Gadsden County-raised creative. In the early 2000s, as an elementary student in Gadsden County, he started writing poems, putting his thoughts and observations about the world in prose.
While no longer as active as a poet, Koonce’s creative origin story starts in the classroom, a fitting place for an artist who considers himself an eternal student of the creative arts. “My creative pursuits started early, during my elementary years,” says Koonce.
While poetry was his first creative passion, he says he stopped writing poetry once he entered high school, but as he went through high school, a love for the arts slowly rekindled. “You know, in high school, you start figuring out what you want to do in life, what you want to pursue.” And the thing the young Koonce settled on was art.
In his senior year of high school, he started writing again — but this time, he began with movie scripts. In a black-and-white composition book, Koonce wrote film scripts and used his peers as his first focus group.
“I’d let my classmates read what I wrote and ask them to be real with me about what they liked or didn’t like,” Koonce said. His composition book would be passed around as fellow students poured over his stories. They would suggest changes or express interest in their favorite parts.
However, Koonce still had not realized the power of storytelling in capturing an audience or fully understood his ability to wield that power.
Only when he missed school for a few days, denying his usual audience their source of stories, did he realize a following for his stories had developed. “When I came back to school, people were looking for me and pestering me about whether I had written anything new because they wanted to finish the story,” he says. That’s when he knew, Koonce says, that his stories could have an audience.
A Renaissance man of storytelling
Koonce does a little bit of everything. From his origins as a poet to his current endeavors in photography, the creatively fueled local artist has a lengthy repertoire. “I have a very strong passion for the creative arts,” Koonce laughs.
Filmmaking, photography, music, and traditional art — he dabbles in a little of everything and does many of those pursuits well. After graduating high school, Koonce decided to pursue filmmaking seriously and began shooting films with friends.
As he directed and produced short films, Koonce said he started taking still photos of behind-the-scenes moments, awakening a new creative endeavor within. “I was always snapping photos,” Koonce said. “I realized you could tell stories with just photos.”
Stories are Koonce’s driving focus. Whether creating a short film or music video, making music, or setting up a photo shoot, he focuses on the stories his mediums can provide. He is primarily self-taught, although he used the pandemic to attend and graduate online from F.I.R.S.T Institute in Orlando with his certificate in Digital Filmmaking and Video Production.
Then, a year and a half ago, he began experimenting seriously with the stories that could be told through still photography and capturing an authentic view of his surroundings.
Shooting for authentic beauty
When asked to describe his photography style, Koonce says it can be summed up in three words: raw, authentic, and original.
“I try to strive for everything to look beautiful,” said Koonce. “When I go around, I see how beautiful the world is. When I take my photos, I want people to see what I see.” Whether telling stories through photography, music, filmmaking, or traditional art, Koonce says he values a style with as little post-editing as possible.
He says he values a ‘supernatural’ element to visual storytelling — capturing the world through an artist’s eyes and helping the audience reengage with the beauty of the world around them.
As such, Koonce says visitors to the juried Photofest exhibition at the Artport Gallery can expect “a different look of Tallahassee” through his entries. “The 850 area is my hometown,” said Koonce. “I want people to look at my PhotoFest entries and think, ‘Wow, we have this here’ or ‘Wow, I didn’t realize how beautiful Tallahassee is.’”
Koonce says his primary inspiration – in filmmaking and photography — is telling stories from his own communities. “What inspires me, really, is my surroundings…the imitation of life,” Koonce says.
From his dual hometowns of Tallahassee and Quincy to the stories and experiences of his family and friends, he hopes to capture the elements of his hometown regions in his art and deliver them to audiences in a way that feels raw, authentic, and inspiring. This is Jonte Koonce’s second photo gallery, having been featured in April 2024 in the COCA-produced Creative Tallahassee exhibit.
The next thing
“Don’t let circumstances stop you from pursuing your goals,” said Koonce. Despite being a new photographer and an up-and-coming filmmaker, Koonce has big plans for his artistic endeavors and has no intention of sitting still on those plans for long.
His next ‘big pursuit’ will be to open a production company. “I want to be able to bring everything, the film, the photography, the music, painting, all in one place,” said Koonce. And once he has everything under one roof, he can start experimenting with other pursuits, such as voice acting.
After the opening of the Photofest exhibition, Koonce says he plans to put a little more of his focus back into his filmmaking. “I want to start work on a web series or release another short film.”
He also wants to explore other exhibitions to display his photography, and he has his sights set on big markets, as he hopes to bring the visuals of Tallahassee and Quincy to a big-city gallery. “If I can do it here in my hometown, I believe I can do it somewhere else too.”
If you go
What: Photofest
When: Nov. 4 – Jan. 20
Where: The Artport Gallery, Tallahassee International Airport, 3300 Capital Circle SW
Cost: Parking is free in the airport lot for 30 minutes
Website: tallahasseearts.org
Ashley Hunter is a feature writer for the Council on Culture & Arts. COCA is the capital area’s umbrella agency for arts and culture (www.tallahasseearts.org)
