Photography and filmmaking share the same DNA — composition, light, mood, the decisive moment — and lionel came to photography through the back door of cinema. During his formal film studies at Vanier College in Montreal and later at Ryerson University in Toronto, still photography was a required discipline: learning to read a frame before you learned to move one. The camera became a natural extension of the eye he was training for the screen.

After graduating, lionel worked briefly as a professional photographer — shooting underground events, documentary journalism, and the kind of gritty street work that New York City invites — before the pull of music and film composition took over entirely. The professional chapter was short, but it sharpened instincts that have never left: the habit of hunting for the photograph before reaching for the camera, the patience to wait for light rather than fight it.

For the past three decades, photography has been a constant companion to lionel's travels — a way of seeing that runs parallel to the listening that drives his music. From the ruins of Pompeii to the temples of South Korea, from the souks of Morocco to the backwaters of Costa Rica, the camera has been along for all of it. The lens changes countries; the eye behind it stays the same.

The travel essay series below spans over 30 years and more than 20 countries. Each video is a curated sequence of stills set to original music — a natural collision of lionel's two disciplines. You can also follow his ongoing work on Instagram.