Beth Lilly
Welcome to this latest and insightful interview with Beth Lilly, featuring her collection, The Seventh Bardo. This has been a long time coming, and I’m happy to finally get her words and images out there. Beth is a prime example of an artist continuing to explore her ideas without leaving any stone unturned. She is always searching for ways to elevate the work and create a compelling narrative. Having had the chance to watch her expand the series over time has been rewarding, especially when it comes to hearing the intentions behind the work and seeing some incredible exhibitions supported by it.
The work is intriguing, to say the least. Seeing people in a trance-like state while behind the wheel on the highway, deep in thought, is a very introspective way to view the world. Nearly everyone knows what it’s like to lose oneself at times while driving. Those long road trips can be soul-searching, right? Beth captures these moments serendipitously and with great skill. I’m sure you can imagine the editing process as well! The body of work also includes moments of the passing landscape, blurred and in motion, just like the drivers themselves. It’s her view and theirs as well. All of this is photographed beautifully and with a strong narrative that is enjoyable to sequence.
Seeing someone develop and promote a body of work such as this is wonderful, so I knew Beth would have some great answers to my questions for this interview. We are always learning, and this is another case of an excellent opportunity to do so. Read on!
Bio -
Beth Lilly is an artist whose photographs, installations, and videos investigate how we become what we are and the role choice, chance, and circumstance play in that ongoing evolution. Her work resides in the permanent collections of the High Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, MOCA GA, the Zuckerman Museum, and many private collections. Her critically acclaimed performance/interactive project “The Oracle @ WiFi” was published by Kehrer Verlag, and other projects have been featured in ‘Noplaceness: Art in a Post-Urban Landscape’ and ‘Earth Now: American Landscape Photographers and the Environment’. Recent exhibitions include New Mexico Museum of Art, The High Museum of Art, the Zuckerman Museum, Spalding Nix Fine Art, Whitespace Gallery, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and the Center for Fine Art Photography. A Hambidge Fellow, she also received grants and awards from the Fulton County Arts Council, APG/High Museum, Society for Photographic Education, and Atlanta Celebrates Photography. Her work has been reproduced and reviewed in such publications as Lensculture, Art Papers, Papermag, Burnaway, The Bitter Southerner, Atlanta Magazine, and ArtsATL. In addition to her personal work, she teaches, curates, and serves on the Board of the Atlanta Photography Group. Lilly holds an MFA in Photography from Georgia State University and an A.B.J. in Telecommunication Arts from the University of Georgia. She currently lives and farms in Clarkston, Georgia.
Interview -
Michael Kirchoff: Looking back to your earliest memories of creativity and image-making, what do you feel directed you to make photography such an integral part of your life? Was there a specific person or event that prompted this?
Beth Lilly: As a kid, I was always working on a project. I had a vivid imagination and wanted to create things, to imitate everything I saw. I wrote books and comic books (mostly about horses), I put on a play from my treehouse, I made a haunted house complete with spooky soundtrack (mostly me moaning and rattling some chains), and I put together a museum. At some point, I discovered there was something special about photography. At my best friend’s house, there was a copy of The Best of Life on their coffee table (a collection of photographs published in Life magazine) that I looked through every chance I got. I would also sneak into my brother’s bedroom to pore over the art on his album covers. Looking at these photographs, I was keenly aware of differences in style, and I felt the images were trying to tell me something. It was a felt sense or intuitive understanding of things that cannot be expressed in words. I was becoming aware of visual language. For example, in the collection of Life photographs, the way people thought and saw things in the 60s was reflected in the way photographers of that time photographed people, and this was clearly different from images of the 40s. Of course, I tried to make photographs too with my camera, a Polaroid, but the pictures just didn’t turn out the way I envisioned and so I moved on. It was only later when I was a film student and for my last semester of undergrad, I took a Photo 101 class, that it all came together for me. There was just a deep and profound certainty that I had found my life’s calling. I felt I could do anything with a camera, explore anything, say anything. I loved the way the world looked through the viewfinder and the magic of the darkroom. It was much more personal and hands-on than video. Photography also felt much more nimble and fluid than the tedious pace of making feature-length films! I did give filmmaking one last try – I was a flunky on the crew for “Friday the 13th Part 6,” and that was the final nail in the coffin of my film dreams! Dealing with crews and production companies felt like a nightmare, no pun intended!
MK: What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started making photographs?
BL: That making a photography series was absolutely NOT quicker and easier than making a full-length feature film!!! OK, besides that, when I was in grad school working on my MFA, I felt a tremendous amount of pressure to conform to a very narrow definition of what art photography could be. This was the 80s, and it had to be black and white, shot with large format and feature the “right” subjects; an acceptable print had all the zones represented. I wish I had allowed myself more time to experiment with every crazy idea that came into my head. I felt I spent the first ten years after grad school overcoming some of those “rules” that had been beaten into me. Correction: I spent the first ten years after grad school working as a photo editor in the entertainment industry, which was even more conservative. It was a great job, but I felt my spirit, sense of exploration, and curiosity were being beaten down. The world has changed so much since then, and I believe that has come about due to the internet. Yes, it has many aspects that are terribly destructive, but it really allowed for so much experimentation, and photography just exploded with this amazing creative energy.
MK: What is at the core of your work? Is there a theme that runs through everything you create?
BL: You know, at first glance, it’s hard to see similarities between my series, either stylistically or subject matter. And it really used to bother me, like, why am I all over the map? Then I came to understand that I do think like a director in that I borrow from genres to use as vehicles to carry a whole slew of messaging, ideas that we’ve come to associate with those genres. But then I upset the cart – confound expectations, (at least I hope to!) by delivering a very different message. The common thread running through all these wildly different bodies of work is that they are all autobiographical, but not in the sense of relating a series of facts – this happened, then that happened, then that. Instead, it’s a record of the thoughts and emotions that were preoccupying my interior life at that time. For example, an early series was an installation based on the stations of the cross. That’s the structure or genre I borrowed. But the images began with rigidly composed street portraits of people going to work in the daytime, and as day shifted to night, they became increasingly blurred portraits of people in nightclubs and roaming the streets at night, and then transitioned back to day. Instead of enacting spiritual growth with a definite end, you become caught up in an endless loop. That was me trying to come to terms with leaving grad school and becoming an adult. I was terrified and didn’t know how to make that leap, and I only saw two paths before me – a corporate day job or chaotic instability. Or my series on street trees, Monster. It was an empathetic illustration of how I and you and every living being are the sum of our choices and our reactions to the obstacles we encounter in our lives. Another series was literally autobiographical. I re-staged actual events and dreams from my life, but I selected the most fantastical so the viewer doubts the objectivity of the narrator. I was exploring how the stories we tell ourselves about our past shape and create our identities – not the content of those stories. My series are the artifacts of me trying to figure out how our minds work and how that impacts our lives.
MK: The images we are exploring here come from a two-part project called The Seventh Bardo. Can you give us some background on the collections? Also, after reading your statement and speaking previously with you about it, I’m intrigued by the concept behind the title, so maybe some insight there as well?
BL: Right, so this is a project that is shot entirely while I’m driving on the interstate. It started with me balancing the camera on the half-open driver’s window and shooting randomly while keeping my eyes on the road. My method quickly evolved to having three cameras on tripods and using remotes (again, my eyes never leave the road!) to photograph people in their cars, as well as a handheld fourth camera I had converted to infrared to take the landscapes. I’m still highly influenced by my film background. The landscapes establish the mood and inform the viewer that the work is conceptual, not a documentary. They describe the place as a no-man’s land, a no-place, and by that, I mean, you can’t tell whether it was shot in Louisiana or Tennessee because the interstate looks pretty much the same all over America. The portraits are printed much smaller to feel intimate and to pull the viewer in. These are portraits of the people who populate this limbo world and who appear to be unaware of their location. That is, they are not reacting to their environment but instead caught up with an internal world. What fascinates me about the interstate is that there is no other place in our culture quite like this. I mean, it truly is like a parallel universe. The interstate has no beginning point and no end! And we talk about it as a place separate from geography. I rarely say, ‘I’m in Hall County, Georgia,’ or whatever my actual geographic location is at that moment. Instead, I say, “I’m on the interstate.” I often describe it as a place outside of space and time because it can feel as if you don’t really go anywhere; you’re just sitting in your car, stationary, while images of a landscape appear to pass, endlessly repeating itself (exit ramp, overpass, entrance ramp, exit ramp, overpass, entrance, bridge, exit ramp, and so on). So I don’t really feel time passing or forward progress being made. Calling it a liminal space just didn’t say enough. Then I came across a podcast by mindfulness teacher Joseph Goldstein where he says that travel (in his case an airport) was like a bardo. If you’re not familiar, a bardo is a concept from Tibetan Buddhism. It literally translates to “an in-between space” between two states of existence and usually refers to the state of being in between death and rebirth. What makes a bardo special is that it offers an opportunity for transformation. So, by calling it a bardo, I draw attention to the fact that not only is the interstate a parallel universe we can enter and exit at will, but it can also be a destination for the sole purpose of disengaging with the ordinary pressures and demands of our life to think or daydream or just mindfully enjoy the experience. The interstate is a place to retreat to for an internal journey and potentially work through problems and issues.
MK: So why a separation into two projects? It seems like you often exhibit them as one.
BL: When I first started showing the portfolio to other people, particularly at portfolio reviews, I mixed portraits with the landscapes. I often received feedback that they just didn’t work together as they were - that the portraits felt quite different from the landscapes. I had to agree that the backgrounds in the portraits did not resemble the landscapes. The depth of field was too deep, and the shutter speed was too fast; in short, they were too sharp or too ordinary. So, I began to work on that. Since these images are not documentary but part of a conceptual project, I felt the nature of the project made it ok to replace the backgrounds in some of the portraits with something that resonated more with the landscapes. An example is the woman lighting a cigarette. The original background was a grassy bank. It was just a bland, solid tone with no detail, no contrast, and no soul. I replaced that with a background that shared that beautiful light on the driver and referenced a repeating feature of the interstate – a billboard. When the portraits and landscapes became more unified, it felt like they were from the same “world,” so I went back to presenting them together. For me, that’s part of the creative process. And why feedback can be so important. As my understanding of a project grows, as what I was trying to express as an artist becomes clearer, the images I create become stronger and more powerful.
MK: My take on the portraits has always reminded me of looking into a fishbowl or watching animals at the zoo. Seeing our human element in this way is especially fascinating. It must be that after so much time working on this, you probably have some feelings about what these people are thinking while their guard is down.
BL: I love the fishbowl analogy. I think of the cars as big glass bubbles, each floating down the interstate, sealed off from the world and each other. But it is also a fishbowl from the point of view inside the car. When people get lost in thought while they’re on the interstate, they don’t ‘see’ outside the car anymore. The landscape becomes a blur of vaguely definable shapes that barely register on their consciousness as they fly by, while distant features like clouds seem solid and eternal. People are so deeply immersed in their world of their own making that what they see is their memory of the past or their project of a future. Their world is entirely inside their head. And that’s what is so compelling to me. I’m intently examining the slightest variations in expression or gesture as I wonder, where are your thoughts? What’s going on in your private world? For me, I begin to feel so much more empathy for people in general. Seeing them with guard down, I see how everyone struggles so much with their lives, no matter their race or gender or class. I feel it makes me much more understanding when someone cuts me off or speeds by. I know they are just acting out their personal struggles. One friend commented that everyone seems so unhappy in my pictures, so I try hard to find portraits of people laughing or showing positive emotions. Interestingly, those seem to arise when they interact with other people. Those are the moments when their burdens seem to fall.
MK: Any exceptionally interesting stories from one of your shoots? How often do people realize what you’re up to?
BL: Almost all of the shoots are dreadfully boring. They feel more like a silent meditation retreat than an adventure. The interstate reminds me of a Talking Heads song, “Heaven is a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens.” I think that’s one of the things that’s so surreal about interstates. There are designed so that nothing ever happens, they strategically bypass towns and cities, so in a way they go nowhere. And even though people are passing you just feet away, it’s like they are not really there. They are like spirits drifting by, but if you look, every once in a while, you lock eyes with someone, and then you both quickly look away like you’ve violated some rule. So, it can be a dance of connecting and disconnecting. I feel especially close to the images I’ve worked on in Photoshop. I was driving around town once when I recognized a man from an earlier shoot by his smile and confirmed it was the same guy by the markings on his pickup truck. It was like seeing an old friend. One of the stranger events was when my niece was driving my car while I was photographing out the window. I passed a car where I saw a young woman, also with a driver, photographing out her window. We were all laughing and took photos of each other. The scariest event was when I was pulled over by a highway state patrol officer for speeding. I thought, ‘Oh no, this is it. He’s going to freak over all these cameras, probably think I’m a terrorist casing out bridges, etc.” I was sure I would be taken in for questioning! But if he even once glanced over at the four cameras, three on tripods, all with very long lenses, I never saw it. Instead, it was just an ordinary speeding ticket encounter. Of course, I have no doubt that being a middle-aged white woman in a pickup truck made all the difference in the world. But I make no effort to disguise or hide my cameras. So, probably 80-90% of the people I pass see and react to the camera. Most of them just kind of roll their eyes in disdain; some appear curious. You’ve got to wonder what’s going on with this crazy setup – I would. Occasionally, someone will make an offensive gesture at the camera, but surprisingly, only a very few seem angry. People keep predicting that someone is going to pull a gun and shoot me, but I stopped worrying about it.
MK: While there are certainly some technical preparations to your project on any given day, I also wonder what mental preparations you make to execute a particular day on the highway to make photographs? Do you ever look back and find that nothing you had planned was the outcome, yet you feel completely satisfied with the progress you’ve made?
BL: The odds are so stacked against capturing anything usable that I am constantly disappointed. To combat that, I repeatedly remind myself not to get attached to outcomes. As you say, the technical preparations are huge. I have to stack the deck in every possible way. Even so, you can shoot day after day and get nothing at all. You shot for hours, but the camera’s position shifted, and all you got were a thousand photos of your back seat. And then I start to feel that it’s all futile, I’m accomplishing nothing, and shouldn’t I be spending my time doing something more useful? You know, when I’m driving around Atlanta, just living my life, not shooting, I see the most amazing people doing the most interesting things. Go out with a camera and poof! They vanish. Every once in a while, you get crazy lucky. My favorite times to photograph are around the big holidays when all kinds of people hit the road to visit family and friends. I have a show that opens on April 5 at the SE Center for Photography, and I realized that of the 16 portraits, four were shot on the day before Thanksgiving within an hour of each other! I am looking forward to shooting this month because it's Ramadan, and there will be some underrepresented folks hitting the road for iftars! The most surprising and satisfying works are the landscapes. The simple combination of fast speeds and a slow shutter can yield the most remarkable results. Again, I make many amazing photos, but not necessarily images that convey that feeling of a crack between worlds. For me, the landscapes are the magic, the spice that keeps me challenged and intrigued, and they are at the heart of the project.
MK: Is there anything about your creative process that you feel people miss or are misinformed about?
BL: Thank you for this question! There are two issues that keep coming up. First of all, people freak out that I’m driving and photographing. If I explain my method, you might agree with me that it actually makes me a better driver than the average bear. The top three causes of accidents are distracted drivers, drunk drivers, and speeding. Highways are designed to require very little action or decisions, so people get bored and distract themselves. Needless to say, I am sober and because my full attention is on what’s going on around me and my car at all times. I might be the safest on the road. I drive at moderate speeds and, most importantly, leave plenty of room between me and the car in front of me. I’m not looking at a screen. I’m looking at the traffic. When I sense a car is in frame, then I press the shutter release. Half my images have nothing in the frame! It’s also why I can shoot for hours and not realize the camera fell off the tripod. The other issue is about exploitation. Remember, my camera is simply recording the people I pass. So, I am targeting no one. As such, I have captured some moments that would make for sensationalist images but would probably be horrifying for that individual if made public. I am very careful to select respectful images. But they need to be compelling in some way. That’s a very fine line to walk, and why it’s taken me so many years to find those kinds of images. I heartily dislike what I call “cultural tourism.” I don’t see any value in making images that look at people as exhibits at a freak show. On the one hand, I wish I could ask drivers for their permission and collaborate. On the other hand, there is something unique to a candid portrait. While in the public view, there is an illusion of privacy and drivers and passengers tend to behave in a very natural, unself-conscious way. There is a very human desire to watch others anonymously and wonder, or imagine, what their lives are like. For me, it is an act of curiosity and empathy. Each person is a mystery, even our children, best friends and spouses. Ultimately, we are unknowable to each other but yet, we can each connect. My greatest wish for my portraits is that viewers connect with the drivers, that we feel and recognize in them the things we share with all people – hopes, fears, aspirations, tragedies, and joys.
MK: What do you feel is the best way for you to grow as an artist? Are there any fears behind treading new waters?
BL: For me, I think it goes back to that earlier question you asked – what did I wish I knew when I was first starting out? The best thing for me is to just try each crazy idea that pops into my head. Just try it and see. If you are alluding to new technologies, new processes, like AI, I don’t fear those nor am I attracted to them. I will learn all about it if it serves my purposes for a project idea. But there is still so much to explore and discover with existing photographic processes. Just think, artists are still doing amazing new things to do with cyanotypes!
MK: Do you study what others are doing, and do you find their influence in your image-making?
BL: Definitely, yes! It’s all about that. If I did not look at the work of other artists, the well would dry up. Become creatively bankrupt. You have to feed the beast. I feel everything you’ve ever seen, felt, or experienced influences your work. But beyond that, I turn to other artists for inspiration. Whenever I get into that emotional funk, the one most photographers I know experience at least once when you begin to wonder why you even bother to take pictures and despair of ever achieving anything meaningful…When I get into that funk, the only remedy is listening to an artist talk, documentary, or interview, and all the excitement comes rushing back. And it doesn’t have to be a photographer or even a visual artist. And I can’t tell you how many times something random an actor or musician or director says will resonate and inspire me, or I’ll see some great work, and it sparks ideas or solves some problem I’m working on.
MK: What steps do you pursue in order to find an audience for your photographs?
BL: I do the only thing I know how to do. I try to show the work whenever I can. I am a clumsy user of Instagram, and I am awkward at self-promotion. I prefer talking to people one-on-one. I guess that’s why I like portfolio reviews so much. I have the best conversations with reviewers and other artists alike. You know, I really love people who love photography. For the most part, as a “species,” photo people tend to be just really nice, really interesting people.
MK: My thanks to you, Beth, for your time and energy on this interview. As a final question, I’m wondering how you see your work progressing in the future? Do you have anything new you are currently working on that we should be on the lookout for?
BL: Yes, I finally found the perfect project for my 4x5 pinhole camera. It involves aliens and forests and repeating patterns. You’ll love it : )
You can find more of Beth’s work on her website here.
All photographs, ©Beth Lilly
