Liliroze
French photographer Liliroze talks about her artistic journey. She reveals how emotions, dreams, and inspirations from artists like Paolo Roversi and Sarah Moon influence her work. She discusses her approach, her transition from analog to digital photography, and the process of creating her images. Liliroze also touches on her timeless still lifes, inspired by Dutch Vanitas paintings, and offers a glimpse about photo books. Join us for a deep dive into the world of Liliroze.
Thomas Berlin: Lili, it's great that we can do this interview. We want to talk about your artistic photography, which includes people and still lifes. Can you please briefly introduce yourself first?
Liliroze: Most of the time, to describe my work, I present myself as a impressionist photographer. What I’m looking for is to give materiality to sensations, feelings and emotions.
Thomas Berlin: When I see your pictures, I think of pictorialism, painting and sometimes Paolo Roversi. Does this really have anything to do with your mindset or are you inspired by it?
Liliroze: Of course I’m inspired by it ! Paolo Roversi is one of my favorite photographer, as Sarah Moon. And of course, painting is an infinite source of inspiration. I keep all those images in mind, they feed me and they melt in my brain and when I work, a little bit of it comes out, I guess.
Thomas Berlin: Let's start with your people photography. How would you describe your pictures to someone who doesn't see them themselves?
Liliroze: I would tell that I’m trying to see and seize something of my models beyond their faces or their bodies, like a little bit of their soul, a sort of fragility, an abandonment… Most of the time, as I’m working with few light and long exposures, it’s almost like if you could feel breathing and heart beat in the picture.
Thomas Berlin: How did you arrive at your photographic style?
Liliroze: When I discovered 4x5 inches camera and Polaroïd films. I immediately liked the colors of the films, the accidents, the texture. I felt like I finally had found the perfect way to express myself and the sense of my writing.
Thomas Berlin: Is there a mission or something you want to trigger in the viewer with your work?
Liliroze: I like to think that my mission would be a reminder of what is beautiful, as not to forget that it exists. To be able to see, even in the darkest despair, that beauty and poetry could be found. Like a lifeline, to hang oneself up.
Thomas Berlin: Do you have role models and other sources of inspiration?
Liliroze: I dont really have role models. But as other sources of inspiration, I have literature, poetry, art, movies and dreams (those you have at night while sleeping).
Thomas Berlin: Interesting that you mention dreams as a source of inspiration.Dreams have always been a significant source of inspiration for artists, as they provide access to deep emotions and subconscious thoughts. I just often find that I can barely remember the dream shortly after it has happened. How do you deal with this in practice?
Liliroze: Well, it’s easier to remember a dream when you wake up just after you had it. And as I wake up often. Sometime it’s even the dream that wakes me up. I remember a lot of them. And when it’s an important dream, I take the time to tell it to myself before going back to sleep. To „print“ it in my head.
Thomas Berlin: That seems to be a good source of inspiration for you. Besides your dreams, how do you develop other image ideas? Do you tend to work spontaneously during the shoot or do you follow a concept?
Liliroze: Both of the situation exist. Sometime I have an idea of an image, and then I would do anything to build it, including painting background and sew a dress. But sometime during the shoot something comes out and I follow it…
Thomas Berlin: Let's talk about the results. What is a good picture in general?
Liliroze: For me it’s a picture that is an eye-catcher and that moves you.
Thomas Berlin: And when are you satisfied with your own pictures?
Liliroze: I don’t know. At one point I just feel it. I guess it’s when it seems to me that the emotion is right.
Thomas Berlin: How did you develop your style in artistic photograohy over the years? And what was the most important trigger?
Liliroze: Emotions have always guided me. I let them grow and then try to express them in pictures. I realized that over the years, my work gets more and more pictural. I feel like I photograph as one touches, as one sculpts. I believe the boundary is thin between painting and my way of photographing; it’s somewhat about touch.
Thomas Berlin: What role does the models play for you and how do you choose them?
Liliroze: Models are very important because they embody the idea of the shoot. The way I choose them, it depends. Sometime I work with professional models, but most of the time, I work with models I find around me and that inspire me. People I meet, or friends, or my children…
Thomas Berlin: How can I imagine a photo shoot with you?
Liliroze: It would be very simple. I would talk to the model, and explain my idea, or even sketch it. Then we would take place in my studio or anywhere else where I imagined the picture, and dress (or undress), and simply shoot, with no additional light, and sometime in dark room… It’s really intimate.
Thomas Berlin: When you photograph in dark rooms, is that a conscious decision to search this special mood or is that simply the situation you find yourself in?
Liliroze: At first I guess it was a situation I found myself in. But I could have chosen to light the room, and I didn’t. Then it became a conscious decision.
Thomas Berlin: Who else is there besides you and the model in your shoots?
Liliroze: That also depends. Sometimes There is an assistant, a make up artist, a hair dresser and a stylist, but more and more often, there is only me and my model.
Thomas Berlin: What is your lighting setup?
Liliroze: A window (laughing) I’m working with natural light only, even if there is few of it.
Thomas Berlin: Even though we are focusing on your artistic people photography in this interview, I wanted to mention that you also create timeless still lifes that remind me of old paintings. What is the idea behind this and why don't you focus on people?
Liliroze: Yes, they are inspired by old Dutch paintings, Vanitas. It tells about the fragility of existence, its strength, its inexorable and ephemeral brilliance and that everything is vanite. Actually, it’s just another way to deal with the same subject: life.
Thomas Berlin: Let's move on to the technical side, which I normally not emphasise but it is very important for your type of photography. You work or worked analogue, including on Polaroid film. Can you please say something about that?
Liliroze: Well, it was really important when I worked with 4x5 inches camera and Polaroid films. But now, I work with a digital camera (Nikon), and technical side is not important anymore.
Thomas Berlin: Understood. But even your two most important lens focal lengths would still be interesting ...
Liliroze: … 50mm and 80mm.
Thomas Berlin: Your analogue phase of photography was characterised by a certain process. Was this helpful for your artistic work or rather a hindrance due to the technical constraints of analogue photography? And in view of your new, i.e. digital photography, it would be interesting to know what has changed in the meantime, for better or worse?
Liliroze: This was very helpful for my artistic work. That’s why I’m always trying to re-create this analog look. But I must be honest, one thing has become easier: the pictures are free from unwanted dusts. So I don’t have to clean them anymore after scan and before working on them. Also, before I was taking very few images on a shoot. Then I was studying the picture before taking another one. Now with digital photography, there is no limit. So I must admit that I take much more pictures. Sometime too much, and after that, editing is a nightmare.
Thomas Berlin: The look of your pictures was largely determined by the Polaroid film and its very own look, especially when the film had expired. Did I understand you correctly that you are now recreating this Polaroid film look digitally?
Liliroze: Yes I do, I use old Polaroid films to create filters and I apply them digitally, with Photoshop, to recreate the Polaroid look on the pictures I take with my Nikon.
Thomas Berlin: What does your workflow look like after your shoots?
Liliroze: Well I sit at my desk with my computer, I look at all the pictures and make a first selection with my favorite ones, and also with the pictures that have interesting details. I open them in photoshop and begin to work. Sometimes I mix them, and make a final selection. Then I work on the chosen image, add filters and my pictorial touch. It’s really like painting. Sometimes it’s fast, and sometimes it takes time… It’s a little bit like a revelation process.
Thomas Berlin: When and why did you start presenting your work in physical exhibitions and books?
Liliroze: Physical exhibitions started very soon. My first one was in 1996. From then I had almost one every year. Books started later, in 2012. Both are a great way to present your work, and a great achievement. Most of the time it also marks an end to a work and helps opening a new page and renew.
Thomas Berlin: What means the physical presense of your images compared to digital presentatins in social media and in the web in general for the consumption of art?
Liliroze: I don’t think it can be compared. Physical presence of my images is a physical experience. Paper grain, depth of colors, chosen size of the images. Materialization of the images brings them to life.
Thomas Berlin: As you know, I own your first two books (Confidences and Fol Amour). Can you tell our readers a little about these books and also about your upcoming book?
Liliroze: Thank you for that! Fol Amour is my first released book. It’s less personal than the other ones, as my pictures are illustrating literature extracts of famous books on the subject of love. But I was not the author and didn’t work on the development of the book.
Confidences was much more personal. It contains 20 years of photographic work, and took two years to build. It talks about “the things of life”: desire, passion, longing, love and heartache…
Ici et Ailleurs, is my next book and will be released at the end of the year. It’s the same kind of book than Confidences, (12 years of photography) and deals with the same matters, but it also interrogates about childhood, loss, death, and our relationship with passing time. I think it’s the most intimate. Plus, my editor is specialized in exceptional books, and the quality of the paper and impressions will be stunning.
Thomas Berlin: What makes photo books interesting in general and what was particularly important to you in your photo books?
Liliroze: Books are between physical presence and digital presentation. And they are not just like a photo album: their structure allow to bring a vision to light, to develop a work, to express feelings and tell stories. They register a work in time. I love books, so naturally it was important for me to make some of them. Mine are like therapy. At one point, I need my work to exist of its own and out of me.
Thomas Berlin: How do you now, with experience, go about a photo book project? Do you have a theme for which you want to take photos or do you develop a book theme from your archives? And can you say something in general about your approach?
Liliroze: Experience allows to work a little bit faster. But really, the thinking process is the same. For my two personal books, I didn’t have a pre-existing subject, but worked from my archives. Actually, for the first one an editor offers me to realize it, and then I begin to think about what I wanted to tell with it and how. For the second one it was a bit different. I feel like it was a necessity. I had no choice: I had to do it. And everything set up naturally.
Thomas Berlin: A big challenge when creating your own book is often choosing just a few images from a huge archive. I hear that often and now notice it in my own book project. What does that look like for you? How do you do it?
Liliroze: Well, I hate to make choices so at the beginning I place all the pictures I want. Then, normally, someone warns me about the number of pages and the price (the editor most of the time (laughing). Then you realize that some images are redundant and that the book will be more beautiful and powerful with less images, you are on the right way. And then you finally make choices…
Thomas Berlin: Could you tell me a few favourite photo books you like very much or you find inspiring?
Liliroze: Wow! That’s so hard to make choice again ! But here are a few:
Coïncidences or 12345 from Sarah Moon, The Architect’s Brother from Robert and Shana Parke Harrison, Photographies de Joël-Peter Witkin from Witkin, Photographe de l’invisible from Duane Michals, Haute couture from Cathleen Naundorf, Insomnia from Antoine d’Agata, Eaux fortes from Christophe Jacrot and Somewhere from Christophe Mahé.
Thomas Berlin: Lili, after so many interesting facts about your photography, I would like to end the interview with a few questions about you as a person: How did you get into photography? And is photography your full-time job today?
Liliroze: I get into photography as a young girl of about 12 years old, after seeing my father developing pictures in our bathroom. I never stoped since then. After graduations, my parents wanted me to do serious studies, so I did a master in econometrics. But during this three years, I spent most of the time doing pictures. So after my master I quit everything and went to Paris to make a photography school. It’s now my full-time job.
Thomas Berlin: Is there anything you want to achieve in the next few years?
Liliroze: A lot of projects! But not one in particular.
Thomas Berlin: What do you do when you are not taking photographs and creating art?
Liliroze: I raise four boys, I take care of all my animals - dog, cats, chicken, ducks, occasional birds to rescue - I cook and I have a cooking blog, and I love to read and to watch movies and series.
Thomas Berlin: Would you like to say anything at the end?
Liliroze: Thank you for your interest!
Thomas Berlin: Lily, thank you very much for the interview and the interesting insights!
You can find Liliroze on her website and on Instagram. Feedback is welcome here. Images: © Liliroze
I first became aware of Liliroze 10 years ago in a programme on FotoTV.
