Biography
Stephon Slater is a Virginian contemporary photographer with his foot in many other avenues of photography. The artist comes from a single-parent household where he is the older brother; however, he is the younger brother to his sister on his dad’s side. He lived most of Stephon’s young life with his grandparents, mother, and brother. The biggest influence for Mr. Slater to create is his little brother Jayvon, as he wants to be the role model for his brother that he deserves in the absence of their fathers. Mr. Slater began taking an interest in art when he was 13, where he would edit his older cousin’s varsity football pictures. Along with editing his cousin’s football photos, Stephon found joy in taking pictures of blooming flowers on his crappy Android and old iPhone. To this day, Stephon is still working in sports photography as a photographer and editor. Stephon has been heavily influenced during his tenure in college by his former professor, Jay Zuberi and world-renowned artist Dread Scott. Mr. Slater currently specializes in photography; however, he heavily uses performative art and time-based media in his work. As you look through his work, you see that he uses large-scale projection and layered photography to talk about identity and bring to light topics surrounding the Black Community. His biggest accomplishment thus far in his young career is winning the 2022 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship for Undergraduates. He has earned a spot in the “Made in VA” exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Arts. Mr.Slater also won gold for the College Photographer of the Year in 2022 for Illustration. Stephon achieved this all while being a first-generation college graduate. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography in May of 2023. After graduating, he was hired by the Longwood University Women's Basketball team as the Director of Creative Content, where he transformed their social media branding and increased their post engagement by 200%. After his short stint with Longwood Athletics in 2023-24. He is now enrolled at VCU's Center for Sports Leadership as a Grad Student and is currently working as a Creative Content Grad Assistant for VCU Athletics. During his time in Grad school, he shot all varsity sports at VCU while maintaining the highest GPA in his collegiate career. During this time, he also crossed into the Illustrious fraternity of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.