Biography - Vitamin Dee

Denise Lugo is serious about fun. Dee, as she is known amongst the musicians and DJ’s who frequent her imaginative landscape, is a photographer and graphic designer. Warm, playful and vividly spontaneous, Dee infuses her work with a deep curiosity of life’s mysterious extremes. Of Puerto Rican descent, Dee was raised in the dichotomous worlds of Manhattan’s Loisaida and Stapleton, Staten Island. These environs and her experience of living in two very different worlds form the foundation of her vision. Like a footloose street urchin, her sensibility is both childlike and darkly knowing, a truly unique perspective into the worlds she chooses to inhabit.

Her favorite haunts-nightclubs, various soirées and other nocturnal venues offer up some of her most treasured subjects. DJ’s immersed in deep spin, musicians and dancers entranced in groove, sexual revelers tapping out the fringes of psycho-physical rapture- all capturing the inherent ecstasy of the moment. Pure sensuality-color, texture, movement- is another source of excitement in Dee’s work. She relishes the perfection of imperfection in her various subjects.

A large collection of still photos commissioned by bands from the Indie, Rock, House and Hip Hop club scenes round out her portfolio. Most recently, she shot Jessica "Sugar" Kiper who is on Survivor: Gabon. She did the press kit photos for Alix Alvarez and The Martinez Brothers. You will also see her work on the cover of Mr. V’s 12” single, “Jus' Dance” which was released by Vega Records. Other clients include Om Records/Om: Hip-Hop, Cielo Club and Sole Channel Records.

Dee Lugo studied child psychology in college before going on to receive her degree in graphic design from Katherine Gibbs in New York. Her love of photography developed during one photography class she took while studying design. Merging her keen visual sensibility with her love of people, Dee captures the essence of “how people make fun,” which she helps us see is an act of spirit and not mere frivolity.

Written by Alison Laird Craig

“Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment in yesterdays.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson