Portfolio: Lilo Raymond

by Beth E. Wilson, September 25, 2008

Lilo Raymond’s photographs relentlessly pare away the inessential, presenting simple subjects—a neatly made bed, a vase of flowers by a window, the carved stone face of an angel from a funeral monument—enveloped in a rich veil of natural light.

Born in 1922, in Frankfurt, Germany, Raymond fled the Nazi regime when she was 16, settling in New York, where she became part of the bohemian Greenwich Village art scene, taking various jobs as an artist’s model, a waitress, and even a tennis pro. She came to find her poetic vision only later in life, seriously taking up photography only in her late 30s, when she studied with the legendary photographer and fine art printer David Vestal at the Photo League. She began exhibiting her work at various galleries in the ’70s, eventually moving to the Hudson Valley some 20 years ago.

Her work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others. A retrospective exhibition of Raymond’s photographs, “Lilo Raymond Photographs: An Elegant and Natural Light,” will open at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz with a reception on October 10 at 5pm. She will be receiving a Vision Award from the Center for Photography at Woodstock, at its 2008 gala in a ceremony at the Bearsville Theater on October 11; www.liloraymond.com.

Seeing shades of gray
At one point in my very early years, I thought I would like to be a painter, but it took too much imagination. I liked seeing things in front of me, things that I could connect with. I couldn’t do it without something concrete. It turned out all right, I guess. I just sort of plugged along, and I didn’t pay much attention to what else was going on in the world. I made my own little world, and I liked that a lot. I look at things in black and white—I say, “Oh, this might be a good picture.” I see things, and it’s absolutely in black and white, like I have some glasses on that change things. It’s awesome, it really is.

I always had that approach. I was always centering in on very simple things, like a vase of flowers. That’s how my still life came about. But I always had that sense of simplifying things [with my photographs]. I think what I do is that I stare at something, and then it invites me to take a picture.