20Something: Stefan

On adventure, manifestation, and taking pictures of garbage men.

Stefan Lewikowski’s favorite colors are sunset colors. He tells me this as we sit on my rooftop overlooking the Chicago skyline, waiting for the sun to dip below the horizon so that he can photograph its coda from 15 floors up. Soon it will begin its westward sojourn, bathing us, and the city beyond, in pools of golden light. Pastels will bloom across the sky like watercolors. The clouds will turn a bruised sort of purple, darkening as the light flattens out and at last a shade is drawn across the horizon. You know, the works.

Given the sun’s current position—just on the precipice of what would be considered “going down”—rays of light beam directly into a pair of brownish-greenish eyes, resulting in a near-lupine effect. I, for my part, am backlit, which means that the same light that casts Stefan in this empyrean glow is most likely (definitely) haloing the intense layer of frizz all over my head that the wind insists on kicking up. If there is an omnipotent energy force at play in this world, which Stefan is sure there is, it obviously plays favorites.

As we await the sun’s descent, we talk. He tells stories in a winding sort of manner, one leading into another into another so that his life unfolds in front of me like a pop-up book. He’s tangent-prone, I discover during a 10 minute aside early on in our interview in which he tells me about the time he was arrested, and subsequently jailed for three nights, in Mexico. He wouldn’t recommend it, but it does make for a good story.

He pushes a stray lock of dark hair out of his eyes and squirms a little when I ask him to tell me about how he first got into photography. It’s hard to trace the genesis of his career back to a single moment—it was more like a smattering of happenstances strung together over the years—but if he had to pick one, it would be the night that he and a friend snuck into the Spring Awakening festival at Chicago’s Soldier Field in high school, cameras in tow. What began as a teenage boy’s adventure unfurled into something that Stefan realized he had a knack for: finding his way into festivals (whether via the traditional ticketed route, or, you know, otherwise), capturing them with his camera, and sharing his photo- and videographic evidence online.

“Music festivals plus exploration is how I was teaching myself to take photos and videos,” he says of his adolescent years. I ask if he attended festivals primarily to capture them, or did his camera serve as his ticket in? It was a chicken-or-the-egg scenario, apparently: “Sometimes I would go to these things by myself, right, and maybe the camera was like an escape, in a way,” he admits. “Like if I was nervous, or didn’t know what to say, I could just go off and do my own thing.” But he loved festivals regardless of photography, and he loved photography regardless of festivals. It simply happened that he found his niche between the two.

Photography is his full-time gig now, and his talents stretch far beyond music festivals. The breadth of his subjects is vast: weddings, travel, festival work, some work for small businesses, some work for big businesses, portraits. Take a gander through Stefan’s oeuvre and you’ll find a diverse array of shots. Some capture cityscapes, some landscapes; there are portraits, both of the self variety and of others; there are action-packed videos, ever-stimulating to the eye with dizzying transitions, and serene shots of nature, sparsely edited, raw, unadorned. There is one of A$AP Rocky, megaphone in hand and pink rollers in hair, climbing out of a helicopter suspended mid-air and nearly engulfed in flame.

I ask him what his favorite subject to shoot is and with an utterly straight face, he tells me that he likes to take pictures of garbage men. Right. Totally the response I was expecting.

“Something I’ve noticed recently that I enjoy shooting while traveling is different ways of life… as in, garbage men,” he explains. I must look bewildered, because he forges on: “I always photographed different garbage trucks, different construction workers, children– I don’t know if that sounds weird,” he cuts himself off. But he admits that he finds himself photographing children everywhere. “They probably just have a different energy to them?” I offer. Something more joyous and carefree, perhaps, a subject not yet weighed down by the toils of adulthood. That’s it, he agrees. He says it’s less about the garbage men and the children themselves, and more about having a subject matter that he can follow through any of the new environments he finds himself in.

“Is it more so the visual composition of a scene, or a photo, that makes it appealing to you,” I ask, “or is it the people? The components of the image? Does that make sense?”

Yes it does make sense, and it’s a combination of stuff, he says. “Going to a new area and seeing a new way of life that’s so different from yours is very inspiring, I think. It just fascinates me.” Anything could catch his eye—a flower, someone with unique style, the geometry of a skyline, someone reading the newspaper—and he could feel compelled to capture it. He likes to find threads of similarity across an array of differences.

But these vignettes are just his present. One day, he wants to be known for shooting action films.

“The first time I ever wanted to shoot one was my freshman year of high school,” he tells me. He’s always been inspired by Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise, he says, and he’d love to do his own stunts. He says that action-laden scenes often pop into his head, and while he’s not sure what story they’d be telling, he knows they’d be cool to shoot. “I have these scenes in mind, but then I’m like, ‘What’s the story? What’s the reason for the fighting?’ ’Cause I don’t want to do a cheesy-ass action film.” He loves the adventure aspect of these films (checks out), and is partial to a good underdog story (classic).

He’s a bit of an adventure junkie himself, in fact. He’s really dialed it back now, he says (on account of the Mexican jail situation), but earlier on in his career, “getting up on any crane, any rooftop, anything that you honestly weren’t supposed to be on was, like, a great thrill for me.” He loved the feeling of having to work for his result. He loved risking a lot, and being rewarded with more. Indeed, I watched him eye the stretch of my rooftop beyond its railings with a suspicious gleam in his eye when we first arrived.

So, given that he spent his formative years sneaking into music festivals and climbing buildings, did he have any expectations for how his career would play out through his twenties?

“In a way, yes.” He hums, then tuts, then hums again, seemingly casting a line back into the depths of his early-twenties memories, hoping for something to catch. After a few moments, the line tugs. “I wanted to just make a living creating videos, and stuff like that. But I was told a lot that I couldn’t do it.” And thus, the expectations he held for himself were fraught with imposter syndrome. He tells me about a time in his early twenties when the delicate walls of confidence he had built early on in his career came crashing down. It was Covid-era, jobs were scarce, and he felt like he had nothing to show for all his work. Said imposter syndrome abounded.

“Do you ever still feel imposter syndrome now?” I ask. “Or do you feel like you’ve kind of gotten past that?” He waxes pensive momentarily. “Yes and no,” he says. “I think I’m trying to get better at realizing that I’m, like, good at what I do. It’s always weird because…” he pauses again, taking a deep breath. “You’re charging for an art… and that’s sometimes weird… Sometimes I’m like, ‘What I’m doing is easy,’ but then I realize some people don’t even know how to turn a camera on.” In the same breath, he assures me he wants to stay humble and avoid a heightened ego. “I think that might prevent me from learning,” he says sagely. “But I’m definitely confident in myself that… as long as I keep showing up every day and putting in work….”

He trails off and never actually finishes this thought; distraction has struck in the form of two chattering groups greeting one another at a table behind us, eventually merging into one teeming display of revelry. I wonder if he’s eyeing them through an imaginary lens.

His attention restored soon after, he turns instead to compliment the people he finds himself surrounded by. He credits much of his work ethic and his ability to push past self doubt and find faith in himself to his parents – his mother, an architect from Colombia; his father, an electrical engineer from Poland. “I’m very blessed for my parents and the sacrifices they have made. For showing me new ways of life and living. For dealing with my shenanigans growing up,” he laughs. He also says that getting to work with different people, getting to learn from them, grow with them, is an invaluable experience. “It’s sick,” he smiles. Immersing himself in a creative environment “definitely helps” to ease any feelings of not being good enough. That, and having other people appreciate his work and express a true, enthusiastic desire to work with him. It feels good to feel wanted.

“I think [imposter syndrome] is gonna be a constant battle,” he adds as an afterthought. Life, and the breadth of emotions that accompany it, has a tendency to ebb and flow as constantly as the tide. One week you feel on top of the world, only to come tumbling down the next.

Regardless of whether he’s in a high season or a low one, Stefan says that one of his main priorities in life is to have as many experiences as possible. “I think that was more the driving factor with my camera,” he says of his earlier years behind the lens. “My camera has brought me basically around the world.” This year alone he’s been to Brazil, Colombia, LA, Aspen, China, Switzerland, Rome, Monaco, and “Ibitha,” with Hawaii and Thailand on the horizon.

From what he’s told me so far, it seems as if Stefan has lived a hundred lives within his twenties. He laughs when I tell him this. “Every year I manage to do some fun, wonderful adventure… Every year I make it a habit to make sure I’m playing.” For Stefan, “play” could include (but is not limited to): fuckin’ rollin’ around in the woods, taking some mushrooms, riding his bike, and jumping off stuff into water. The world is his playground. He doesn’t mind when life gets a little hard, he says, because he knows that more play, more fun, more good, is on the other side.

We get to talking about good versus bad years. I, in all my eldest-daughter-type-A glory, am prone to categorizing, well, anything. As such, my years are generally categorized as either good years or bad years. 2023: bad year (quit my job, spent far more time than I’d like to out of my routine); 2024: good year (new, great job, lots of new, great friends); 2025 is net positive so far. 2026 feels promising.

I’m not at all surprised when Stefan counters this: “I think... within a year, there can be super great moments, and then there’s also, like, some could say, crazy crashouts, where bad shit keeps happening.” Like, he offers, parking tickets, getting arrested, love failing. You know, the usual ups and downs of life. He doesn’t like to look at these matters so stringently.

Not that he would label it so definitively as his Best Year, but the first year of his twenties was somewhat of a standout. Age 20 saw the start of his journey shooting music festivals professionally and fostering the sense of adventure that would shape his entire career. With a wistful glint in his eye and the corner of his mouth hitched up in a hint of a grin, he describes that year as “baller.” He’s not being glib – I can tell he genuinely feels that way, like he can still tap into the excitement of being at an age when you’ve just discovered your passion and the world is your oyster. Or in his case, muse.

“I think when I was younger… I think I just felt like everything was pretty possible, as long as I believed [I could] do it,” he says. In fact, this is still the case: he’s big on manifestation. He’s spiritual, he tells me, and he puts a lot of stock in the power of otherworldly forces. Here is where he and I differ: I would love nothing more than to be able to place blind faith in the otherworldly, but alas! I need cold hard scientific proof in order to really buy into something. It’s not for lack of trying, though. Call it trust issues, maybe, an avoidant attachment style to all things beyond my ken. “I just can’t wrap my head around it,” I sigh.

“I have a few magical moments,” he offers.

“Okay, share.”

He starts by showing me the affirmations he keeps on his phone lock screen. If his manifestation practices work as intended, his business assets should soon be fully funding his lifestyle and a new car, his art should be bringing in enough money to fund more creative projects, and he should be fluent in Spanish. The last one reads, “My word is law.”

He tells me stories of trips that have materialized out of thin air, cameras that have fallen off of his vision board and into his lap, money that has landed in his account against all odds. Admittedly, if Stefan were my only source of truth, I would have no choice but to believe in the power of manifestation. But there’s a caveat, he cautions: “You can’t just get too comfortable and think that everything is going to come to you.” Manifestation doesn’t work unless you take some form of action towards your goals.

I ask him if there is an ultimate goal he’s striving for. “I feel like you’re the type of person whose goals are constantly evolving and developing,” I say. But is there something that would make him feel like he really made it?

“I think to have an ultimate goal would be kind of silly,” he says. “I think the point of life is to grow and evolve, and I think once you hit that peak, or that plateau, you can get depressed and feel lost and not know what to do. So… I’m always adding new goals.” When it comes to his career, his current ambitions are twofold: he wants to build up his business portfolio, and then he’s gonna get around to making those action films.

“What does building up your business look like for you?” I ask.

Monetarily, it looks like hitting specific income levels each month and as such, there is a sticky note inside his bathroom mirror that reminds him of this every time he reaches inside. He knows it’s possible.

Practically, it looks like building up his retainer client roster, which currently sits at a grand total of one (not to be confused with his contract clients, which currently abound). “I feel like a lot of people in my shoes would be mad stressed sometimes,” he grins. (It’s me. I’m the people that would be mad stressed in his shoes.) He doesn’t always know what his next job will be, but he knows there will always be a next one. He just wants more consistency, is all (if for nothing else, then for his currently nonexistent future wife, who probably is not “gonna want to have that much chaos in her life.” It’s sweet of him to think of her).

I notice a pattern in him as our conversation progresses: he’ll start by answering one of my questions with a measure of uncertainty in his voice, or a lack of conviction in his own response. But as he elaborates, he talks himself into a new answer, a bolder one. It’s as if his true answer sits in a locked box, his own stream of consciousness ostensibly the only key.

“Okay, you know what the goal is?” he says after one such bout of pondering. “To have cash just pouring in so I can keep working on my own creative projects. Like the action films.” A smile, then: “I just want to grow, and allow my body and mind to do its best.” This, a mindset that he says he doesn’t know the source of, and I say seems to be inherent in him.