The Secret Garden of Lily LaPalma is a series of photographs made in the shadows of a dark side of me that I have been exploring. Without meaning to make them so, these photographs reveal my fears and private memories, all the things that are wrapped up, not always so neatly, in someone’s life. In the Garden there is danger and beauty in a wild jungle that grows unfettered. The photographs address an exterior world now being re-interpreted in my interior landscape as a documentation of my subconscious and imagination, often posing as something entirely unrelated and recognized only by me. The photographs are done on the spur of the moment. I go from the gut. I don’t want them to be perfect because reality isn’t perfect, it’s messy, and the imperfection of these spontaneous moments reflects what I’m after.
The Garden is where I feel the most free and creative. Like a maiden standing on a windy hillside or a wild horse running across an open plain, I am set free from opinions of others and my own expectations.This is where my animalistic wild creative spirit resides. I have let loose a part of me, joyously rebelling against the tyranny of the documentary photography that has described me for decades and against how I am perceived as an artist.
Maggie Steber
Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, 2017—2018 in support of this project.
Maggie Steber : The Secret Garden of Lily LaPalma
February 13, 2019 – May 15, 2019
Lydmar Hotel
ödra Blasieholmshamnen 2
Stockholm, 111 48 Sweden
