Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with long-time friend, artist Beth Lilly, to discuss her photographic work and her unique approach to storytelling. Beth’s wit, keen eye, and her wonderful sense of humor are often reflected in her work and are evident throughout our conversation. Her newest project, The Seventh Bardo, is a series of portraits and landscapes taken on Southeastern interstates. It envisions this in-between space as a place of refuge from the demands of the everyday.
-Barbara Griffin
Denizens #10 ©Beth Lilly
Exodus ©Beth Lilly
Barb: Yesterday, I was looking through my computer at past interview questions, and ones I’d asked other people, just to make sure I had some good ones– do you remember I interviewed you before?
Beth: Oh, yes.
Barb: In 2017.
Beth: A long time ago.
Barb: I went back and read it. It’s really fun.
Beth: Is it?
Barb: Yes. So this is part deux.
[laughter]Barb: I am calling this interview, Is This Interview A Dream?
Beth: Ooh, I like that. Is this interview a dream?
Barb: We can’t get started without acknowledging our long history.
Beth: We have a relationship.
Barb: Colleagues, friends, fellow lovers of photography. We worked together in the photo department at Turner Broadcasting for many years, but I didn’t realize that you had this entire parallel world going on where you were creating art through photography and producing site-specific performances.
Beth: Oh, yes, that’s right. Performance art. [laughs]
Barb: How did you balance your work life and your creative life, or did you?
Beth: It was really, really hard because our job was all-consuming, but I looked at it as what can I learn here? There were so many skills to become better than the average bear, edit your own work, or better yet, edit other people’s work. Sequencing, understanding the power of sequencing, and looking at a body of work, and how does this tell the story? Just looking at this work, what does it say? Then, on the flip side, this is what I want to say. Am I seeing it in there? The job was teaching me skills that I did not get in my master’s degree. It was always sparking ideas that I filed away to work on when I had more time. Plus, I got six weeks’ vacation. It was pretty sweet.
Barb: It was sweet at the time, wasn’t it?
Beth: Yes, it was. I can’t remember too much what I did, but I know I used a lot of that time for making art.
Barb: I never took vacation, or not enough. Really went too deep down the well.
Beth: That’s the way it was. Then it came to a point where my job became more and more administrative and soon I was working late and couldn’t take vacation. I think back, and wonder if I could have just let some things go or create boundaries. I wasn’t good at that. My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, so I decide to just step down because I couldn’t find a way to put the demon back in the box.
Barb: It was a lot happening at one time, that’s for sure. At work you were getting ideas that you filed away. Your photographic work is very idea driven…
Beth: Definitely.
Barb: …which I really like. How do you think about building a conceptual photographic series versus standalone images? Is that something you made a conscious decision about? Or is it just where the work takes you?
Beth: A full project is just much more interesting to me than single imagery. Single imagery is, in a way, oh, I’m going to go hunting for a bear. I got one. Now I’m going to go get a lion. To a hunter, I’m sure that’s very interesting but to me it’s kind of aimless.
My undergraduate was in film, so I still think cinematically, where all the parts, the scenes, add up to a story, a theory, or a message. One of the most interesting things about photography, to me, is it felt like doing experiments. Like my Oracle @ WIFI project – could random images tell fortunes? But most of the time, it’s me trying to figure out life, how the mind works, things like that. So, the process can feel like talking out loud. Most of the time, my projects start intuitively, and then I have to figure out what it’s about. It’s a process of self-discovery.
Barb: I can see your film background informing the way you tell stories with your photographs. That makes sense. Telling a story in a single image is difficult, but putting a series together is not easy either. It’s interesting how your various series have evolved. I remember when you first started photographing people driving in cars. I can’t remember what you called it at first, but it seems like it’s been through a couple of evolutions to —
Beth: First it was Lost In Thought . Then it was A Moving Image Of Eternity. That was a quote from Plato about time. Very intellectual. Then it was In Passing, and then it became The Seventh Bardo.
Barb: The Seventh Bardo. I think it’s interesting now to be able to go back and look at how you started that project, how it’s evolved, and how you found deeper meaning in it. Is that typical of your work?
Beth: Yes, I think so. It’s funny you should bring that up. I was thinking about that this weekend and how it’s a process that starts intuitively. I was fascinated by photographing people in their cars. They’re very candid. They’re not posed. You’re having this unfiltered glimpse of people. They’re not putting on their persona for the camera or for social media. They’re just being themselves.
I was looking at the pictures I made and asking myself, why is this fascinating to me? Easier than tackling that question though, is to think of similar work that it is not. Like, how is this different than, say, the photos of people in cars by Andrew Bush? His work was clearly about LA car culture and the weirdness you find in LA; social tourism. That’s not what I’m about. So that determines what kind of images I’m selecting. I continue to shoot and look at the pictures that I respond to and keep asking, is it maybe about road trips, like Lee Friedlander? No, even though I love road trips, being on the road, and there’s some influence from the film, Paris, Texas, but there’s definitely something else happening there. So no, that’s not it. It’s like one part of me makes work and then another part of me has to keep digging to find out what’s really going on. Early on in this project, I kept thinking about Harry Callahan and his series, Women Lost In Thought, which he shot in Chicago. Hence my first title for the series. He was photographing pedestrians, women, specifically, who were lost in thought. He was wondering, what’s going on inside. They’re clearly–in their head. What are their concerns? What are they thinking about? They are totally tuned out to the immediate stimuli, paying just enough attention not to get hit by a car as they’re walking down the street. It’s also about people’s internal worlds will always be mysterious and always be unknowable because even if I stopped you and say, “hey Barb, you’re lost in thought, what’s going on?” Even if you told me, there would be no way I could know what being you felt like.
Barb: Yes, nor could you truly understand it. Lost in thought in a car, you’re in your own bubble, in your own world.
Beth: But it was when I thought about why I personally love road trips, I take long trips on the interstate to solve life problems. When I have something really big to work out, I just get in a car and drive. There is something about just hours of time where I don’t have to be accountable to anybody because when you’re driving, you can’t do anything. Sorry, y’all, I’m driving!
Barb: That’s what I used to feel like flying.
Beth: Flying is very much like that too.
Barb: Pre-cell phone nobody could bother you.
Beth: Also, you back off on all those demands on yourself to be productive and just relax. Driving gives the left side of your brain just enough to keep it busy while the creative parts of your brain chew things over. I just let thoughts bubble up, and for me, it seems to work itself out. If you can be laid back, just watching the landscape, and things come up and problems feel so small under these huge horizons and hours of free time. I said, that’s what this is about. The magic of that space, its about that experience of that awkward in-between space where your life is in free fall.
So my fascination with looking at other people, I’m wondering, are they involved in that same process? Are they going through a divorce like I was at that time? Have they just lost a loved one? Are they unhappy in their career and they’re trying to change? Do they hate their town? Are they trying to escape a bad relationship? Are there any clues that are visible? Do you know the work of Rineke Dijkstra?
Barb: Oh, yes.
Beth: One of her first series was photographing women right after they’d given birth and she states outright that she wants to find out if you can see the residue of that transformative experience on their face.
Barb: Could you?
Beth: It’s hard to say for sure. She had one where she did a before-and-after. This was years later, and it was shot in Israel, where there is a draft. Both men and women have to serve a year in the military service. She would make a portrait of a person right before they entered their basic training and then another portrait after they’re wrapping up their year. Then you could compare before-and-after and see…
Barb: A negligible difference?
Beth: Yes. Is there a difference in this person? Is it visible? Will you know that they’ve changed? How could you not change? There’s such an experience. What is visible? What can you see?
Barb: It’s like when they show a president before and after and how much they’ve aged in a short period of time.
Beth: Exactly.
Barb: When I was refreshing my memory on your work and looking through The Seventh Bardo series I noticed a picture that you took in 2010 titled I See God…
Beth: [gasps] Yes.
Barb: That was eerily similar to an image from The Seventh Bardo. You wrote on that image “I found myself in a blinding light. God came out of the light and told me to remember the dream that it would mean something to me later in life.” I’m guessing this is in what year…
I See God ©Beth Lilly
Tunnel Vision ©Beth LIlly
Beth: That was shot in 2010. The tunnel was shot in 2014. The one of a woman in silhouette, she’s backlit and she represents God. I was retelling stories from my life that were incredible or bordered on the credible in the series, every single one of these stories is true. To put the attention of the viewer on the, well, is it true or is it not? By stating that, suddenly, it’s in their head.
I was relating an actual dream that I had when I was 11 years old, and it was right before the most catastrophic event in my life. It started out as a dream, but when I woke up, I swore that I had had “a vision”. I was raised in the Protestant church where these things happen to everybody, apparently, at least to an 11-year-old, it seemed to. It had this “heads up, things are going to get rocky, but hold on tight, you’re going to be okay” message to it.
Barb: The Seventh Bardo seems like the pure light of God. Obviously, this image is in your psyche because you’ve recreated it again. Does this feel like the second image is the realization of that prediction in the dream? There’s something important to you about the light at the end of the tunnel.
Beth: Oh my God. That’s so funny because now I’m seeing it with a whole different interpretation than I have ever seen before. It did, didn’t it? It’s come true in a different way.
Barb: When I saw that, I didn’t know if it was deliberate, and I was so excited to mention both images because I thought, hang on to this image, it’ll be important someday. Then here it is again.
Beth: That’s so wild because it was – listen to this. This was a key image. I started out in The Seventh Bardo, it was all about the people in cars. I shot from 2014 to 2018, and I just hit this plateau. It wasn’t right. It was repetitive. It needed to go somewhere, but I didn’t know where. I decided to put it on the back burner and do other projects. I printed two images. A portrait and this one. And this tunnel image wasn’t even shot for The Seventh Bardo, but for something else, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind and I felt that it fit in somehow, but I didn’t know how.
Barb: It’s been in your mind since 2014, or since you were 11.
Beth: Yes! To both! I made an 8×10 of this and my favorite portrait, and put them on the wall, next to my computer so I could keep looking at them and figure out where to take the project, And why part of me thought the tunnel image was really, really important.
Barb: It’s beautiful too. As a photograph, it’s beautiful.
Beth: Thank you, yes it had me mesmerized. It finally came to me in 2020. It’s about the place. It’s not about portraits of people. It is about the experience of the place. I’ve got to have both landscapes and portraits to really convey the experience. Here is the place shot from the point of view of the driver. Then here is a view of a driver experiencing that place. That’s how I could convey the experience visually.
Barb: It’s funny because I was going to ask you, do your ideas arrive fully formed or do they evolve as you’re working on a project? It sounds like it’s an evolution.
Beth: Yes, most of them. The only exception was Oracle@WiFi.
Barb: My favorite.
Beth: I was stoned [laughs] and said, “I know…!” [laughs]
Barb: I know what I’ll do…
Beth: I’ll tell fortunes with my cell phone! Does it not sound like an idea that would come out of cannabis? Yes, it does. That was the only time I had a fully formed concept before I started.
Barb: It’s funny because your If By Chance series and Oracle@WiFi, even to some extent, The Seventh Bardo, rely on locations and some element of serendipity.
Beth: Oh, definitely.
Barb: Do you follow an inner compass when choosing where to shoot?
Beth: Usually. For The Seventh Bardo, I had to be on the interstate, but I went with my inner tuition on which interstate. I found the universe was pushing me to stay in the Southeast because every time I went to another region, it was a total bomb with no usable photographs. I stuck to the Southeast.
Barb: Interesting.
Beth: All the portraits are random because I couldn’t be looking through the camera while shooting, the camera just recorded whoever passed me but which interstate I took was totally intuitive. I was like, I think I’ll go on the Florida Panhandle. There’s some crazy folks down there, which is–
Barb: Florida Man.
Beth: Oh my God, yes, I’ve got to get the perfect Florida Man. I don’t think I ever did. Remember, at the start of this interview, you asked, how’d I keep doing photography while I was working? While I was working at Turner, on days that I could, I would go out, close my eyes, pick a point on a map, go out walking in Atlanta, and see what came up.
Barb: Or what was there.
Beth: What was there, yes. That was the series I wound up titling, If By Chance. It was the only way I could keep shooting while working at Turner, it was something I could do when I had an hour or two. I could just grab the camera, walk out the door, and go out. What was the other one?
Barb: Oracle@WiFi.
Beth: That was–
Barb: Random too.
Hotel Window ©Beth Lilly
Beth: Completely random. All systems of divination are based on random chance. What was random was where I happened to be when someone called for a fortune reading. ON Oracle days, I would come up with a list of errands, so I had a little bit of direction, a little bit of structure, and it kept me going to new and different places. Like, oh, we’re going to take some stuff to the dump. That might be interesting. There might be some good photographs at the landfill. Or I’ll visit so-and-so at the cemetery.
Barb: Or go the dentist.
Beth: Exactly! going to the dentist. I called my dentist before a check up and, I was like, “This is going to sound really weird, but I might get a phone call…”
Barb: And have to take a picture.
Beth: Have to take three pictures. That was Bill Boling, who called me while I was in the dentist’s chair.
First Born Grandchild ©Beth Lilly
Barb: That’s hilarious.
Beth: I was like, “Bill, you must be going through something excruciating because I’m …
Barb: At the dentist. That’s hilarious. It’s so funny how often you’re in the right place at the right time. I was in awe looking back on the pictures from Oracle@WiFi, at how often what you shot and the person’s question dovetailed with the location when you didn’t know what the question was.
Travel ©Beth Lilly
Beth: It was uncanny. I kept saying to myself and everybody, this is an art project. I really have no psychic abilities, but there’s something about random chance. There are times when, literally, I got chills in the back of my hair. Did I tell you about the time I was on Peachtree, north of Midtown. On one side of the street was R. Thomas. The restaurant had all those birds. Across the street–
Barb: Still does.
Beth: Yes. Across the street–was the coffee place with all the desserts.
Barb: Cafe Intermezzo.
Beth: Yes, Cafe Intermezzo. I was driving down Peachtree, and I got a call. I was like, “Hold on, let me pull over.” I parked over at Cafe Intermezzo. I just got her email address. It’s like, “Don’t tell me your question. I’ll make three pictures. I’ll send it to you.” I hung up and I was like, “Ooh, Cafe Intermezzo. There’s that amazing dessert case.” I go inside and there is a host who asked me “Can I help you?” And I said, “Yes, I just want to photograph that dessert case.” He goes, “Oh, I’ll have to check with my manager to make sure that’s okay.” I’m like, “Fine.”
I went and sat in the bar. The bartender asked, “Who are you? Why are you here?” I explained the project. He said, “What kind of question do people ask?” I said the first thing that came to my mind, I said, “Imagine that you’ve just interviewed for this job, and it’s been offered to you. You’re trying to decide whether to take it or not.” He goes, “Oh, okay, I get it.” I photographed the dessert case, then my other two pictures. By the time I was at Peachtree Battle Shopping Center, I had my three images, so I pulled over and sent them to the caller. She replied, “I just interviewed for a job. It was offered to me, and I want to know whether I should take it or not.”
Barb: Oh, my gosh.
Beth: That was when it’s just, I could not believe it. My blood turned cold, hair stood up, and I was like, this is freaking me out.
Barb: That’s so funny.
Beth: It was so weird.
Barb: It’s funny because I think there’s a lot of mystery in your work. At the same time, you were acknowledged recently, for The Seventh Bardo work being documentary work. Which I think is fascinating. I can see on one hand how you are documenting people in their cars. To me, I see it in the light of a fine art project. Was that surprising to you?
Beth: Kind of. Projects that I fall in love with have a lot of different layers to them, a lot of different things going on. The interstate is like the town square of our time. Most people go on the interstate at some point. It’s like I’m taking a random sampling of who is in America, or at least in the Southeast region of America, at this time in history. So it is documentary in that sense. In that way, similar to August Sander and his People Of The 20th Century. He was, on purpose, documenting the people of his time, but this is a, doing that without meaning to. it has that additional layer that I’m very much I’m aware of. Back when I was searching myself to figure out what the project was about, that was a consideration. But I concluded, not really, because it’s not purely documentary, though I could have taken it in that direction but my heart wasn’t in it.
Barb: I can see where there’s an aspect of it that is definitely documentary. You’re photographing people in cars and documenting what that looks like.
Denizens #38 ©Beth Lilly
Beth: Who’s in the car?
Barb: What’s their story? Much of your work lives in the space between a liminal space between reality and dream. I can see that in The Seventh Bardo, but I can also, from my background, see it photo-journalistically. Alternatively, a lot of your work has a dream-like quality to it. Where do you do your best dreaming?
Beth: Where do I do my best dreaming? Ha! In bed asleep. My dreams are always extremely vividly detailed and also very narrative. I make a practice of writing them down in a dream journal, which, if I neglect that, then I stop remembering the dreams. It could be my psyche says, that’s the only way to reach Beth – she won’t pay attention otherwise. They are so compelling and seem so real, for the most part, which is why every single one of these stories is true opens with my earliest memory. I asked my mother about it and she told me it never happened, that had to be a dream. So my earliest memory-
Barb: Is a dream.
Beth: -is a dream.
Waking Up ©Beth Lilly
Yes. I guess my interest in finding meaning in these dreams, led me to read about, Carl Jung and his theories. He had a lot of investigations into systems of divination, like the I Ching. He even wrote the forward to the first Western translation of the I Ching. Which led me to see what that yielded, which gave me the idea for divination for Oracle. It all just ties together.
Barb: It’s weird. It’s weird in the best possible way. A lot of your work is unexplained. I think you issue or present a challenge to the viewer. Is this real? Did this really happen? What if it did? What drives that tension between reality and fiction in your work?
Beth: I think of the quote from Shakespeare. Yes, it’s Hamlet. “There is more between heaven and earth than your philosophies dream of.” I was such a weird kid. I learned not to talk about it to other people.
Barb: That’s what it is.
Beth: It’s fallen asleep. Stay awake. I weirded out adults. When I talked about things like my dreams or I would have imaginary conversations with God in my head. I was convinced that there was this other layer to the world. <<laughing>> I was also convinced if I really wanted to, I could become a horse. I was very young. This imagination and these unseen realms were very real to me. The most interesting to me, and–
Barb: More interesting than real reality is, I’m sure.
Beth: I used to love reading mythology. I remember in fourth grade, we had a class in mythology, which I really loved. It was like these stories, in a way, revealed truths that can’t be talked about in any other way. It comes out in the story somehow. I’m trying to talk about the things that I think are the most important things about being alive and what this existence means, the true nature of reality, whatever. I think storytelling is the best way. I tell stories visually because that’s my thinking and that’s my dreaming.
Barb: Photography becomes the vessel with which you share that, and you interpret it and take it inside in a way, I guess.
Beth: Yes. Now you can tell a story, but there’s this whole other layer. Showing a story reveals the things that can’t quite be articulated. I think that’s one of the reasons I am so in love with photography and visual mediums, is because they can get to that otherness of experience. It’s part of my life, but it’s not this day-to-day thing that can be talked about. It’s ineffable.
Barb: It’s something that you allow the viewer of your work to interpret in their own way too. You’re posing almost the same problem or the same questions to your viewers and letting them make their decision, or apply their own story to it, right?
Beth: Yes. You don’t say too much and let them — the best way to get somebody intrigued is to pose questions or pull them in. What happens next? Where is she going with this? Just finding ways to pull them in but hopefully in an enjoyable way where they’re willing, not a scary way. I think it’s really easy to scare people. I had a dream once about Martin Scorsese. This probably, is so out of left field, but in the dream — this was when I was an aspiring filmmaker, I dreamt that I had won an internship with Martin Scorsese. Part of the award, I would make my own film and he would be a mentor.
Barb: Wow. What a dream.
Beth: I know. What a dream. He came to visit me on set, and I was doing some zombie horror film, or something similar. He looked at me and he’s so disappointed, “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” He’s like, “Beth, you could make anything in the world. A horror film? Really?”
Barb: A zombie movie?
Beth: A zombie movie.
Barb: When you said that, I was like, “Yes.” As if Martin Scorsese would definitely be interested in a zombie movie.
Beth: Yes, no. He chided me. He upbraided me.
Barb: That’s the one thing that’s missing from his oeuvre is a zombie film.
Beth: Probably because he knows — To scare people is the easiest thing in the world. Where’s the skill in that?
Barb: That’s so funny. That brings me to Monster.
Beth: Oh, yes. Oh, shit. I did do a horror film after all. [laughs] Oops. Two maybe, Seventh Bardo is kind of scary too.
Barb: There’s often a dynamic tension in your work. In Monster, we see nature’s chaos shaped by human influence, while in your Element series, you seem to organize the raw elements of nature. How do you balance that push and pull?
Wyman Street, Atlanta ©Beth Lilly
Rogers Street ©Beth Lilly
Beth: Okay. I talk about choice, chance, and circumstance as the spine, the backbone, to how I believe we become what we are. I love the trees in Atlanta. I was fascinated, being at a stoplight and looking at a tree, and you could see the power company had cut it back, but the tree continued to find a way to grow. They were becoming these outrageous shapes as they continued to try and live in the face of adversity. I thought, wow, what a metaphor.
Barb: Seriously.
Beth: Yes. It was, number one, it was an eye opener to me to see that these trees were clearly making choices and even strategies in the way they would grow up over a power line, then down, and then out into the light. You’re like, “They had to think that up. That took some planning.” [laughs] It’s like, in the end, your shape, that is, who you are, is really about your reactions to what happens to you. I was thinking about Frankenstein and I’ve always found it really fascinating that going back to mythology, all of our monsters in the past were, like, a gryphon, half lion, half bird.
Barb: An eagle, or whatever it is.
Beth: All the old monsters were nature-based. Here we are, on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, and suddenly, we get a monster for the first time ever that is manmade, not God-made, not out of nature, but man-made, unintended consequences. I’m talking Frankenstein, where Mary Shelley, the author, poses the question, who was the real aberrant evil person, the poor monster or Dr. Frankenstein? I think it’s Dr. Frankenstein.
Barb: That begs a question in Monster, is the power line the monster or is it the–
Beth: For me, the utility company is clearly the monster. Or, really, the system that values efficiency, or power, over life.
Barb: That’s what I thought. In Elements, you’re taking nature and reorganizing it, as opposed to it doing it by its own volition.
Beth: Yes. Maybe it was a soothing thing.
Barb: They’re beautiful.
Beth: Thank you. I’ve always thought of photography as a medium where you’re using the real world, or as it appeared at a certain place and time from a certain point of view, and using it as rare material. For me, what’s so powerful about photography is how this actually did happen at this particular space and time. You can pull that out as raw material, use it to create something. As an artist, I’m not working in clay or oils or stone. I’m working with these images and I’m building things. Elements, because at that point, I was like, “I just want to take pictures of”-
Barb: Normal things. Pretty things.
Beth: Yes, pretty things. Trees, the clouds.
The Sea 519-518 ©Beth Lilly
Barb: Water.
Beth: They were making me happy. Then it’s like, I’ll just use that as raw material and build things. I always laughed at myself, looking back, so many of them have a circular dynamic. circular. It’s this beautiful balanced flow.
Barb: It’s funny because looking at them, I thought, “These are really pretty.” I read how you made them and how you put the images together to create whatever the end result was. I thought, “There’s always a complexity to your work.” There’s more behind it than meets the eye. How you get there is so thoughtful and interesting conceptually and technically. I was really delighted by that, seeing those elements. I thought, “These aren’t just pretty pictures.” They are pretty pictures, but there’s so much more to them.
Beth: Thank you.
Barb: You’re welcome, Beth. You’re a working artist, but also an oracle, a photo editor, producer, photographer, curator, teacher, mentor. Now, you’re serving as Program Chair at APG
Beth: That’s just strong-arming people to do things for APG. [laughs]
Barb: You do it well.
Beth: Thank you.
Barb: You’re totally immersed in photography from every which way. Has photography become a state of being for you?
Beth: It became a life passion. One of the things that has pleased me about it is that it never ceases to amaze me. I remember having this thought as an undergraduate student, “What can’t you do with photography? [laughs] What can’t you explore? What can’t you describe, capture?” Just endlessly fascinating. New amazing work continues to come out. There are as many different approaches as there are people in the world because it’s all going to be so different. I have to say, I’m really losing steam on making imagery. I think my interest now is in teaching, making opportunities for other people who are in love with photography.
Barb: You’re building community around photography at this point. I think the next time a project lights your interest, you’ll be off on that. For now, it does seem like you’ve got a real interest in this idea of shaping a community.
Beth: Yes, and one of the things I like so much about the people who are involved with APG is their dedication to the idea of a community.
Barb: Why do you think that’s important in the photographic world today, when photography has changed so much and that many of the outlets for photographs have disappeared?
Beth: I wonder if it’s moving outside of my realm, if it’s becoming something I don’t quite understand anymore, that will be fine. Nothing stays the same. Everything grows and changes. When I first started in photography, I thought one of the most fascinating, coolest things was that most of your heroes were still alive, and you could find out where they lived. They weren’t like world-famous celebrities. They were just people, and you could go and visit their house, and most of them would be like, “Oh yes, I’ll sit down and talk to you.” There was real accessibility.
In general, I always loved talking to photographers because they were always so interesting, they may not share my exact interests, but even better, they had their own things that they were into or they were capturing. I may not be a documentary photographer, but I love looking at it, trying to understand it and seeing the vast variety of the world and ideas and things. Maybe this community I’m a part of is making sure that some of that is still there. I felt early on that I was part of a community, that there weren’t a million of us and we were all weird and geeky in our own way, but in a harmless way.
[laughter]Barb: Hopefully.
Beth: Yes, hopefully. I don’t know, maybe I’m hoping that aspect carries on because it was a good experience for me and I want that for other people. Kids these days, with their Instagram. I think the idea of community is changing, too, as well as what photography is and how it’s shared and experienced. That’s good, let the kids do it —
Barb: Their way.
Beth: Do it their way. But if you are interested in making a print and putting it up on the wall, or printing on silk or projecting on a wall, I’d love to help you achieve that. Hopefully, we can have fun while we’re doing it and enjoy each other.
Barb: You’ve got some exciting things coming up for the The Seventh Bardo series. Talk about that.
The Mad Road ©Beth Lilly
Denizens #42 ©Beth Lilly
Beth: Let’s see, does it open in May? At the Do Good Fund. As soon as I heard the concept of the Do Good Fund, I was like, “That’s awesome.”
Barb: What is the concept?
Beth: The concept was creating a collection of photographic works by Southern photographers, or photographers who weren’t necessarily Southern themselves, but their bodies of work or individual images were made in the South, as something that was underrepresented. As somebody who grew up in the South and got my undergraduate and master’s here, it did feel like all the interest was in the Northeast and the West Coast.
The idea was to build a collection and then have traveling exhibitions to smaller cities, regions that didn’t pull in the big art shows, and have these amazing traveling exhibitions, show up in underserved communities. Hopefully, there are future Beths out there who would come across it and go, “This is so cool. I never even thought about this, being a photographer.” I thought that was an amazing mission.
Beth: The Do Good Fund is Alan Rothschild. It’s his thing. I know he’s a lawyer, and I was like, that title, the Do Good Fund, that’s just such Southern lawyer humor. He built a collection, it was all traveling exhibitions and then they were like, “Well, let’s do a gallery too.”
Barb: Now The Seventh Bardo is going to be shown by The Do Good Fund.
Beth: Yes, so check that off on my bucket list.
The Seventh Bardo exhibition opens May 24th at the Do Good Fund Gallery in Columbus, GA with an artist talk June 12th at 6pm. The last day for the exhibition is August 23rd.
Then, there will be a second showing of The Seventh Bardo, opening in January 2026 at the Gadsden Museum.
BIOS:
Beth Lilly is an Atlanta-based artist whose photographs, installations and videos investigate the formation of personal and cultural identities through the interaction of choice, chance and circumstance. Like a film director, she adopts the visual language and photographic process that best supports a project’s concept. 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 other institutional and private collections. Her critically acclaimed performance/interactive project “The Oracle @ WiFi” was published by Kehrer Verlag and other projects have been featured in monographs ‘Noplaceness: Art in a Post-Urban Landscape’ and ‘Earth Now: American Landscape Photographers and the Environment’. Select exhibitions include New Mexico Museum of Art, The High Museum of Art, Spalding Nix Fine Art, the SE Center for Photography, Whitespace Gallery, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and the Center for Fine Art Photography. Her work has been reproduced and reviewed in such publications Lenscratch, Blind Magazine, Catalyst: Interview, F-Stop Magazine, Shots Magazine, Lensculture, Art Papers, Burnaway, and The Bitter Southerner. In addition to her personal work, she teaches, curates, and serves on the Board of the Atlanta Photography Group. Lilly earned an MFA in Photography from Georgia State University and an A.B.J. in Telecommunication Arts from the University of Georgia.
bethlilly.com
bethlillyphoto on Insta
Barbara Griffin‘s work as a Creative Director, Producer, and Photo Editor ranges from photoshoot direction and production, from exhibition curation to fine art photo book editing. Formerly, Senior Vice President of Image Management for Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., Barbara was responsible for all photography created globally for Turner’s entertainment, animation, and news networks.
The Society of Motion Picture Still Photographers (SMPSP) named Barbara an Associate Member in 2021, an honor granted due to her exemplary leadership, management, and support of photographers’ careers both on and off the set. In 2018, she was named President Emerita after 8 years of leadership at Atlanta Celebrates Photography (ACP). This non-profit arts organization produced the largest annual community-oriented photo festival in the U.S.
Barbara currently serves on the board of War Toys, a California-based nonprofit, https://wartoys.org/whose core mission is to advocate for children affected by war. Unique, art-therapy-based collaborations with children amplify their voices and relay often traumatic accounts to audiences around the world through exhibitions, presentations, and media engagement.
X: @barbaragriffin Instagram: @barbaragriffinrocks
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/barbaragriffin1
https://smpsp.org/
