In Lily Gavin’s universe, a simple crack in pavement takes on the epic proportions of a canyon, an expanse of sand assumes the dimensions of the Sahara, and walls open onto infinity. Through a skillful play of scale and framing, the photographer, actress and model born in 1995 in New York transmutes the banal into the spectacular in the manner of cinema pioneers with their studio tricks.
The exhibition’s title, “Innocence,” refers to a child’s gaze, to that primary way of seeing before language fixes forms. “Innocence is something that exists in us pre-conditioning,” explains Lily Gavin. “It’s our natural state, in this context it doesn’t have a negative connotation, like ‘naïve’ can, innocence is something that gets stolen from us over time, and something we must return to.”
This name emerged from an impromptu conversation with American painter Julian Lombardi, in the gallery’s attic, while the photographer was reluctant to name what should first be experienced viscerally, without verbal mediation. “Children look at the world with purity and a curiosity, intrigued by the mystery of all forms.” Her images cultivate this ambiguity. “There’s an inherent familiarity and an inherent mystery in the photographs I made, which means people don’t feel they know exactly what they’re looking at.”
Snow-capped mountains, desert rock faces, glaciers appear photographed through mysterious openings. So many windows molded in clay, slashed in canvas or created in torn cardboard. “The landscapes are old found postcards, they’re used as backdrops almost like on an old studio film set,” she specifies.
The staging is makeshift: a studio, one or two basic lights, the postcard illuminated in the background, the handmade portal in the foreground. In a photograph where a miniature bear is silhouetted against a mountain lake, the frame is “a small stretched canvas that’s been painted and sliced open.” This play between micro and macro recalls the magic of films exploring optical illusion, in the style of “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959).
This manipulation of scale reaches its peak in the image of a crack in sand, captured in close-up, which evokes a canyon seen from the sky. “I was thinking about aerial images I had seen of land art,” comments the artist. “Looking towards the back left side of the photo you really have no sense of scale.” The grain of film amplifies this disorientation: everything becomes texture, topography, metaphor for an interior territory.
Further on, a rusted metal cone that seems strangely standing on two small feet, sits enthroned in a dusty corner like a sacred object. “The cone, which must have had some kind of practical use to it, feels like an animated object,” observes Lily Gavin. “There is a loneliness to this photo but also a quiet sacredness, the way you feel when you enter an empty quiet space like a chapel.”
Trained in art history at Bard College, where she took a course in film photography with Stephen Shore, she retains from this master a Gary Winogrand quote that irrigates her work: “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” Stephen Shore understood that she wasn’t using the camera to document but to “create images and realities that couldn’t otherwise exist.”
Black and white is not an aesthetic choice but a metaphysical necessity. “There is a timeless way of experiencing life through black and white photographs. It becomes very much about light and shadow,” confides Lily Gavin. “I like the idea that I can take that negative into a dark room, and with a bit of light, water and chemicals bring that image back to life.” Film as an act of magic.
“Innocence” by Lily Gavin at Kearsey & Gold Gallery in London until December 13, 2025.
