Rachel:
Today, we are really fortunate to have a guest who personally is one of my favorite. Well, I want to say intimate space photographers, but one interior photographer that I greatly admire for her work in several books that I purchased the first one a while back handcrafted modern.
So I just want to give an introduction to Leslie Williamson photographer- author. And today we’re going to be celebrating the release of her current book “Still Lives: In the Homes of Artists Great and Unsung”. So, so welcome, Leslie.
Leslie:
Thank you. Hi, hi.
Rachel:
So as we were even talking about in our conversation being in California right now, after quite a few years of traveling. And I’m working on this book, reading this book. And I guess just to start out, we’ve talked about this, but how is it now being settled here in California for you?
Leslie:
Well, it’s good. I mean, California has always been my home base. Always circle back here since it’s where I’m from. But yeah, after four years as a nomad I’m happy to have a home, especially because you’re shooting homes.
Rachel:
And so I guess what I’m going to open up with is just to ask you about your background for guests who don’t not know you being a photographer, but also now author and shooting, you know, very intimate spaces, famous artists spaces in your last book. Maybe just, if you could let us know how did you become this photographer with the eye that you have?
Leslie:
No. Well, I don’t know if I can answer that question. I can tell you how I started doing what I do. Yes, yes, yes. So, well, I mean, I’ve been a photographer, gosh, for a really, a lot of years 18, maybe more, more than 15. Going on 20, I guess. I don’t know. I’m halfway through my career, which was mostly. Photographing portraits of people and people, photography. I kind of got burnt out and in my mind I probably quit the photo industry, but it’s what it’s kind of in my blood, I guess, at this point. And so I started photographing a personal project really solely for myself and my friends really, which was seeing inside the homes of all the architects and designers that I really loved because I’ve always enjoyed architecture and interiors and spaces. And so I started photographing that and that led to “Handcrafted Modern”. And I guess the rest is history. I mean, it just, it made me very happy and I just wouldn’t, I couldn’t stop. So, and it’s gotten to a point now where I realized that because of the kind of roundabout way that I began photographing interiors, and it’s like, I always saw them as an extension of the person and as a way to get in touch and get to know people. I photograph a lot of homes of people that are no longer alive. And I photograph in equal amount of people who are, but but still lives is all homes that have been preserved.
Rachel:
And I just see all homes as a portrait of the people who get their expression of self. Which is very much what I feel and believe in with my business, Psychitecture of being a psychotherapist designer to see that connection in you and years back when I purchased “Handcrafted Modern.”
How did you even find the homes or what draws you to each home in space and owner?
Leslie:
How does, how does that relationship start purely by if I love them. I mean, it was there. It says it all is about, and I’m sorry to interrupt, but it is about, I always thought with design and art, it’s not so large. I call right. It’s hard to even unpack rationally. It’s like you love and your attract. Yeah. Is it rational? I don’t think it’s emotional. It’s emotional. Yeah. I mean, that’s really because I started and I didn’t really know it. It was personal, it was a personal project.So I would just like, if I really liked their work and I was really super curious about their house and it’s like, I would try and find out if it still existed or if they were still alive and I knock on the door or call them. You know is really how things started. And so I just, that is, that is how I do things, especially, especially with my personal, with my books, anything in my book, in any of my books. I mean, I can’t write about anything if I just don’t love. Yeah, well, and, but that’s, that’s just what we see. I mean, that’s what I see when I look at the intimacy of each page, each, you know, corner of a home of a chair. It’s like, it is infused with love. And I think when you love you go after it, you connect, you search it out.
Rachel:
And I guess if it’s unrequited, you move on.
Leslie:
Right. I don’t always get yeses. The right ones say yes, I figure. So that’s just it, the right ones say yeses.
Rachel:
Going from handcrafted modern to going to these very accomplished, obviously revered artists of our time. I guess what I wonder is when you’re in that space and I think we’ve talked about it, there’s an, a psychological level, this alchemy that, that comes out in the lighting, the color, the connection.
Leslie:
Well, I mean there’s like a rhythm to my shoots and there’s little things that happens when I know that I’ve like connected with the spirit of whoeverthe artist was, or there’s like little things that happen that I’ve just come to know. But honestly, When I’m shooting, it’s literally just me in this space quietly moving around and at certain points it’s like, I’ll get just really welled up with, it’s just really emotional. Like, I’ll just feel it weirdly. I like if I don’t cry quietly or just get welled up or something from like light coming in a window or, there’s just a certain point. And I will always take that as like, it’s a super good sign. I mean, it’s awkward when people are around and I’m tearing up, but you know, whatever. So yeah, I mean, I don’t know that I know what it’s gonna look like. I kind of just see, I don’t even know. It’s like so hard to explain. I mean, obviously I know how to photograph spaces really well, just innately. It’s like, it’s just something that apparently I was born to do. And I love watching light move and I don’t, I like the quietest parts of homes. The parts that you’d have to be in a house for a while to be able to notice like how the light moves from like where it comes in in the morning. And that’s why I always ask for two days. Cause it’s like the first day it’s really like seeing how it moves through the house light that is. And then the second day I can know it a little and I can follow it in.
Rachel:
I mean, does anyone really be, can anyone really explain alchemy? It’s like, no, it’s not logical. It’s not logical. And I think that’s, that’s the whole artistry of what you do and the creativity that you do. And it is interesting how, you know, journalistically, or even in a podcast or an interview. And I’d like to say this as a conversation, It’s not a rational exercise. The sensory regulation system of light and sound and what I’m looking at my backyard right now, the trees moving yet. It’s such a visceral. Unless like a embodied experience.
Leslie:
Right. It’s so embodied and not even from it’s like pre-verbal so I get what you’re saying as an artist. How do you explain alchemy? You know, it’s like a soul driven exercise. Yeah. I mean, I’ve gotten to the point when I, I know. There’s like little things that happened that I, I know when it feels good.And I’ve had, I’ve had times where, like I had one day in, in this, in “Still Lives”, when I was shooting Giorgio Morandi’s house, I had the worst first day of a shoot I’ve ever had. I just, and I could feel it. Like I could just feel that I was not getting it.
Rachel:
Oh, it was the ghost of his sister?
Leslie:
You should read that chapter. Okay. I had a conversation with a ghost. Okay. I have to delve in that conversation to the readers, this is very much a hook. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don’t, I do feel like the spirit of the soul of, I only photograph spaces where you can kind of feel the soul of the person is still there. And I can’t explain how you feel it. It’s like, I could walk in and it’s like, oh yeah. And you walk in other ones. You know that too. I mean, we’ve all walked into rooms where, you know, you get goosebumps. Yes. And then you walk into other like museum spaces that are preserved and it’s like, oh boy, yeah, this is all put back together.
And you don’t feel anything. It’s soul sucking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, yeah, so. Or just that. And are we okay? What can you, cause it’s obviously in the book, what, who, what artist was the, was the ghost Giorgio Morandi and the ghost was his sister who was kind of like the gatekeeper. She was the last one to live there. Really like four to five since his legacy and really worked until the day she died. She died in the house that I was photographing. I woke up the next day. I had a horrible, like first day. I mean, it wasn’t wretched, but it’s like I could feel it just didn’t have that breakthrough emotional moment and I could feel it like it kind of like a heavy, really hard to shoot. The soul of it was not coming through and I could feel it. And I was freaking depressed at the end of the day. And I looked at all my images and I was like, and I woke up the next morning and needed to talk to Maria Theresa and ask her for permission. Let her know that we were both on the same team. It was like a relationship to allow me in. Like my soul is pure. Please allow me in to photograph your brother.
Rachel:
I don’t know if it’s alchemy or the, the magic of what transformed. You listen to your intuition. And you’re very much connected to that vibration.Right. And you go into a space and I think of as a psychotherapist, depression is not a bad thing all the time. It’s adaptive because it’s information, right. That’s the medicine. Why am I so depleted or can’t I access something? Where am I stuck?
Leslie:
Right. Right. So there is probably, and I’ve never even explored this in psychotherapy in a Jungian sense, but to ask these spirits or gods can we connect to our spirit again,
Rachel:
You connected to host spirit, it sounds like.
Leslie:
I think so, but at the same time as I talk about it, it’s like I can’t really explain what happens. I go with my intuition
Rachel:
I have to say, I mean, not to be so woo, but I know in my home it’s a 1920s Spanish style, and I know there was a ghost for many years in this home.And people would feel it connect with it when they were, you know, staying in my place when I was out of town.
Leslie:
There was one space that like, it was just so psychically. Upsetting to be in there that I just, I, I wanted to get out of there faster than at any space I’ve ever been in. And I was definitely not going to shoot it. To go into that there’s a certain boundary as an artist that you have toI listen to. Without waiver. What I say to my friends is like, if it ain’t flowing, I ain’t goin.
Rachel:
Well, it, it shows in, in your work in each case study of each artist how you follow the light. I was reading an article in the New York times of someone who did this remodel and they were trying to find the right architect and had to live in the house to really understand how the light moves before remodeling. We had to settle into, we had to connect with that. And I feel like in your images, you kind of connect. Like all of the life that’s been experienced in one kind of composite.
Leslie:
Right. It comes to life hopefully.
Rachel:
You want to go into this space. You want to sit on that couch, you follow. I mean, even looking at “Still Lives”, the cover and how the light in those windows just kind of cascades, right. It’s it’s just beautiful.
