This story is featured in CityBeat’s March 6 print edition.
It’s late January at a coffee shop in Clifton, and I’m waiting for Romain Mayambi. The Cincinnati-based photographer, originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is on his way to becoming a self-taught great, and has agreed to tell me his story. I pull up his website again while I wait.
As a gray dusk falls outside, I scroll through a warm and bright assembly of portraits, athletes and funky editorial. I am one of tens of thousands following Mayambi’s colorful, high-energy work via Instagram. His visual storytelling has captured everything from street-style fashion to athletes in action. What started as a random hobby has turned into a skilled art form, connecting people, places and communities frame by frame.
Mayambi walks in right on time, wearing a bomber jacket and a friendly smile. He’s just come from editing the latest in his series of “athletes in unconventional spaces.” Mayambi works as a risk analyst full time, so photography is like a second job. But he doesn’t seem tired. He’s as bright and energetic as his photos. We find a table and take a seat.
Maybe it was fate
Mayambi has been taking photographs since he was a freshman in college studying finance at the University of Cincinnati. He’s curious and observant. That, combined with his love of fashion, made him an avid people watcher and a natural behind the lens.
“I wanted to be able to capture those moments and those people,” Mayambi says. So he picked up a camera. “It honestly just sparked out of nowhere.”
The way Mayambi tells it, becoming a photographer was borderline fate, the trajectory of which began when he was 14. Mayambi’s family wanted to move from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the U.S. They had no specific destination in mind, but a family friend suggested Cincinnati.
“Sometimes I think it’s kind of random. Like, Cincinnati of all places?” Mayambi says. “Everything happens for a reason. We were meant to come to Cincinnati and put our roots here.”
A few weeks after their move, Mayambi’s mother enrolled him and his siblings at Aiken High School. The staff and the students made the transition easy. He felt welcome at his new school, comfortable even. He made friends and found a community. Mayambi attributes some of his sense of home here to the way he was treated in high school. Without that experience, maybe it would have been harder to find the confidence to pick up a camera.
“Do you ever have moments where you try to imagine what things would be like if they went differently?” Mayambi asks. “Like, if we moved to California or something, maybe I wouldn’t have done photography.”
His first subjects were fellow UC students, whose personal style caught his eye and imagination. Mayambi — who is very well dressed — had an eye for fashion even as a freshman, and decided to photograph the people around him.
“At first I was about to start walking up to them with my iPhone,” he laughs. “But my friends are like, ‘that’s kind of weird.’”
Determined to take the more professional approach, Mayambi borrowed a camera from his brother and started shooting. He learned to approach strangers and initiate conversations out of nowhere. He prioritized comfort and professionalism.
“Through that I was able to meet super cool people who are friends with me to this day,” Mayambi says.
Mayambi didn’t have mentors or teachers to show him the ropes. He learned through experimentation and YouTube videos. Being self-taught in this way allowed him to develop a unique style from the ground up. Certain elements of the art were more intimidating than others — like lighting, which he put off learning for the first few years. “I didn’t know where to start,” he says. But the interest always overcame the intimidation.
“When I love something I kind of get obsessed,” Mayambi says. “That’s all I’ll do. I’ll just be in my room watching YouTube videos about lighting.”
It’s all about the people
Community is key to how Mayambi approaches his photography. Many shoots are a collaborative effort, with friends assisting and models sharing ideas throughout the process. His series “Your Flower” highlights people in the city who are actively creating community spaces, events and opportunities to connect. Mayambi gives each person flowers, takes their portrait and asks them questions about community, collaboration and art. The project is part showcase, part gratitude.
“I feel like we have a lot of amazing people in this city who make these moves,” Mayambi says. “I want to show appreciation.”
Mayambi is a very affable person, easy to talk to and be around. That comes through in his photographs. Subjects seem at ease and fully present, almost certainly as a result of Mayambi’s genuine, friendly demeanor. Each model’s personality shines through the picture, making for photographs that feel alive and distinctive.
Curiosity also plays a part. Mayambi has a practice of incorporating interviews into his projects, as with the “Your Flower” series. For another series, he’s talking to photographers across the U.S., “diving deep into what it’s like being a photographer.” This video project is meant to dig into the nitty gritty of life behind the camera, to fill in the information that was missing when he started. There are plenty of videos that recommend cameras or talk about lighting rigs. But when it comes to understanding what it means to people to work in photography, and what it takes to stick with it, Mayambi says there’s not a lot of content.
Now that his audience is growing and he’s becoming more established, Mayambi often gets messages from people asking how and where to start as a photographer. He hopes that these videos will become a resource to share. And he wants to know the answers, too.
“I’m doing it for myself as well, because I’m curious,” he says. “I’m always fascinated by the mind when it comes to creativity.”
Mayambi continues to connect with other artists and collaborators across the country. It seems like his current trajectory could take him to other cities with bigger populations and more opportunities. But a move like that is not on his radar. Instead, much like the subjects of his “Your Flowers” series, Mayambi is committed to putting Cincinnati on the map as a hub of arts and culture.
“This is my home. This is my favorite place to be,” he says. “I’ve learned everything that I know now from here.”
Athletes anywhere and everywhere
Last year, Mayambi shared what would become the first photos in an ongoing series of athletes performing in unexpected places. Two jiu-jitsu fighters stand poised on a red mat in the middle of an empty baseball field. Their movements are mirrored by their shadows. Clouds of the freshly tilled dirt rise from their bare feet. A bright white sun hovers above as one flips the other over his shoulder.
A few weeks later, Mayambi shared part two: boxers in front of Union Terminal. Instead of fighting in a ring (where one might argue they belong), the men face off on bright green grass with Cincinnati’s historic landmark as their backdrop.
The series continues to unfold, gaining more traction and attention with every new installment. A football player prepares to throw the ball down a lane at Madison Bowl. Track athletes sprint through Household Books. Two masked figures fence in Clifton Market. Each photograph celebrates athletic prowess and strong bodies in their element but out of place.
At the same time, the series reads as a subtle homage to the city that Mayambi calls home. Half of these locations are familiar places, buildings and overpasses one drives by regularly. These are the spots that catch Mayambi’s eye as he goes about his life in Southwest Ohio.
In fact, the entire series started because of a particularly stunning baseball field. Mayambi and his dad were on their way to visit his older brother in Dayton.
“[I was] just sitting by the window, just staring outside, and I saw this dirt that was perfectly tilled,” he says. “I’m like, oh my god. That dirt looks so pretty!”
He was drawn to the setting before the rest of the idea fell into place. Mayambi started thinking about what he would do with a field like that if he used it in a shoot. His vision? Two fighters going at it.
“I thought about like, who do I want the fighters to be?” he says. “And for some reason I’m like, oh, jiu-jitsu fighters would be perfect.”
He immediately posted a call for jiu-jitsu fighters on Instagram. A friend connected him to their brother, a jiu-jitsu fighter, who had another friend that was into the idea too.
The day after Mayambi found his fighters, he was driving home and felt that familiar tug of fate again.
“Guess what I saw,” he says, wide eyed. “A baseball field with tilled dirt, like literally right next to my house. Immediately I was like ok, found a spot.”
Mayambi does not have a master plan for the athletes series, but he does have a running list of great ideas. Sometimes a location just speaks to him, and he mulls it over until he can decide which athlete would work best there. He also keeps notes on all the different types of athletes he’d like to shoot. And athletes reach out to him, too. He’s even had Olympians show interest, although distance and budget prevent him from taking up certain collaborations.
Mayambi himself is not much of an athlete. (When I ask, he laughs and says “I’ve been busted!”) This opens the door for deeper collaboration. The athletes in his series know their bodies and their sport, so they can contribute ideas that Mayambi may not anticipate.
“It feels like a collective project,” he says. “It’s a 50/50 thing. I’m like, ‘I’ll leave the technical to you guys, and I will capture you guys.’”
Perhaps this collaborative spirit is part of what inspires the remarkable dedication in each athlete at the shoots. Mayambi says they all show up determined to get it right, and they maintain that spirit even when their photoshoot lasts for an hour and a half in the sun.
Positive feedback and enthusiastic support continue to pour in for this series. The athletes, Mayambi’s community of followers, and even random onlookers all seem invested in the project, interested to see where it will go next. By connecting photography, athletic performance, familiar landmarks, and public spaces, Mayambi maintains that thread of curiosity and community that runs through most of his work.
“People are sitting there watching it, enjoying it,” he says of passers-by. “And people feel a part of it.”
And again, Mayambi himself gets to satiate curiosity. His life as an artist and a risk analyst doesn’t have him crossing paths with athletes out in the wild. Through this series, he gets to learn something new.
“It’s a different world for me,” he says. “Doing this project allows me to bring it into my world and also get into their world.”
When Mayambi first laid eyes on that neatly groomed baseball field, he didn’t have a story in mind to tell. But as the series continues to grow into itself, something coherent is starting to unfold. It’s a commentary on belonging, and how societal expectations can hinder a person’s ability to feel at home somewhere.
“It just ties back to kind of like the way life is set up,” Mayambi says. “Like these certain expectations in people’s lives. Like ‘Oh, you don’t belong in these places. Only people who look like this belong here.’”
By placing divers in lecture halls and wrestlers on rooftops, Mayambi isn’t just creating engaging art. He’s rewriting the rules.
“I can place these athletes in these spaces even though they don’t belong there,” he says. “I feel like it translates really well with that story where it’s like, we can do whatever we want.”
As of now, there’s no clear end game to the athletes series. The ideas are too plentiful, and Mayambi is following the momentum. Eventually he plans to showcase the series in an exhibition, and possibly a book. But for now, he says, “I’m kind of just going with the flow.”
Follow Romain Mayambi’s work on Instagram at @romainmaya.
This article appears in Feb 21 – Mar 5, 2024.