Lilli Waters is a Thai-Australian photographic artist based in Melbourne/Naarm, whose practice blends autobiographical storytelling with rich symbolism and a distinctly feminist gaze. Working primarily with staged photography, she creates intimate, cinematic scenes: florals adrift in dark waters, nacre-covered shells, submerged self-portraits and pregnant bodies captured in moments of strength and quiet reverence. Her images echo the still-life traditions of the Dutch masters, yet feel wholly contemporary in their attention to emotion, ecology and female agency. Water is a recurring motif in her work, symbolising transformation, memory and rebirth. With exhibitions across Australia, Europe, and the US and features in global publications like Vogue, FotoNostrum, and The Opera, Waters continues to explore what it means to see and be seen – through a lens that resists easy categorisation.

Hey Lilli! So glad to have you here. What have you been up to lately?

Thank you for having me! I’m usually balancing a mix of commercial and personal work. I just came off a commissioned shoot for Formula 1, which involved fast cars, bright colours, and a very different pace than I’m used to. It was intense, kinetic, and pushed me to think differently about how I approach motion and speed.

Right now I’m in the deep post-production phase of a slower, more introspective body of work. This new series features underwater photographs of fish, flowers, and textiles, and will form my upcoming solo exhibition opening in Sydney next January. It explores themes of ancestry, memory, and ecological grief, all suspended in a submerged world. I’ve also been gradually assembling a monograph that spans over a decade of my practice.

I’ll attach a photo from my garden this morning. I try to start each day outside, even if just for a moment.

What does a perfect day look like for you?

It starts with stillness. No alarms. Bird song. Two cats sleeping on my chest, their warmth a kind of anchor.

I make a coffee thick with froth. Duke Ellington plays somewhere behind me. Just outside the kitchen window, the quiet comfort of the garden we planted from scratch has taken hold, dense now, cherished and adored. Prolific bees work their way through the flower beds, methodical, unconcerned.

I move without a rush. Pottering. A weed pulled here and there, because I need to touch something living, or maybe just more from habit than necessity.

Later, a walk, seeking out more gardens to get my nature fix, hyperfocusing on how light lands on the colours of green, and how it doesn’t. Romantic thoughts. Long shadows. Afternoon sugar. The sun on my face.

What’s your earliest memory about photography?

I remember borrowing my mother’s Olympus OM film camera in high school and pointing it at shadows. I didn’t know what I was doing. I still use that camera today. She paints botanicals, so there were always her paintings hanging around the house. I think we both share a love affair with observation, with details, with paying attention.

Even then, it felt less like documentation and more like listening. There was something magical about seeing the world reflected back in a way that felt quieter in a chaotic childhood.

Your work often has this cinematic, otherworldly stillness. When you’re holding the camera, what are you really looking for?

I’m drawn to moments that sit just outside language. A glance, a tension, a sense of something unspoken. I’m often chasing a kind of equilibrium that feels emotionally charged, like the air is holding its breath. These are the moments that stay with me, not just in my own work, but out in the world, in films, in art galleries, in the pauses that hold more than the dialogue ever could.

At its core, I think I’m looking for reflection. I’ve always been a little obsessed with self-growth and the emotional architecture of people. The inner landscapes, the patterns, the ways we move through the world. Psychology, trauma, healing, embodiment. These things shape how I see. I’m constantly thinking about what it means to pay attention, to hold space, to witness without controlling. I’m drawn to poetic language, not just in writing, but in gesture, in rhythm, in the unsaid.

I often approach a photo shoot with a sense of what I want to capture, but the beauty and the challenge lie in the moment I have to let go of that. When I stop trying to shape it and just watch it unfold. I’m not trying to explain anything. I think I’m just trying to feel it fully, and maybe hold it still for a moment longer than life usually allows.

Nature features prominently in your work. What draws you to it?

I was born in a counter-culture community in Wytaliba, a remote bush area in northern New South Wales. My early home was a place where nature wasn’t something separate. It was woven into every part of daily life. We had no running water or electricity, and we bathed and swam in the river. That early immersion planted something deep, and I think my work has been unconsciously returning to it ever since. 

Everything I’ve lived through comes out in the work in one way or another, so in that sense I see it as autobiographical. Water is one of the strongest threads. It recurs in underwater still life, in images of women floating or wading, suspended, weightless, somewhere between here and somewhere else. I assume that connection comes from those early years, growing up by the river. 

It was beautiful, and sometimes wild, and completely outside of anyone’s control. I think that stayed with me. 

Being in nature strips everything back. There’s no performance, no expectations. I’m drawn to its colours, to the way light falls through trees, to the small unnoticed rhythms. Nature helps me return to myself. It softens me. It reminds me I’m not separate from anything. 

When I photograph it, I think I’m trying to honour that early relationship. The intimacy. The chaos. The quiet. It’s a kind of remembering.

If you were a photo, what would you be?

If I were a photo, I would be a photo of an overgrown garden, tangled with flowers and summer vegetables – see below, one of my own photos.

Working with big names like Vogue and others, I wonder... Do you ever feel like commercial constraints clash with your artistic voice or have you found a balance?

Commissioned projects come with their boundaries, timelines, and expectations, and sometimes that can feel at odds with the slower, more intuitive way I like to make images. I’ve learned how to work within those frameworks without losing myself. The key for me is staying connected. Even in a tight brief, I look for a pocket of honesty, something human, raw, real.

Commissioned projects come with their boundaries, timelines, and expectations, and sometimes that can feel at odds with the slower, more intuitive way I like to make images. I’ve learned how to work within those frameworks without losing myself. The key for me is staying connected. Even in a tight brief, I look for a pocket of honesty, something human, raw, real.I’ve been fortunate. Many of the commercial projects I take on are inventive, collaborative, and allow me to bring my perspective to the table. I’ve worked with clients who value narrative and trust my visual intuition, which makes a world of difference to my internal compass, absolutely.

That said, I’m careful with the jobs I accept. Photography is so intertwined with how we see and sense the world and I don’t want to erode that or stray too far from my weird, specific lens. Honestly, it’s something that worries me, that I might lose my edge. That’s what gives the work its pulse, its meaning.

Commercial shoots also hone my agility. They sharpen how I respond, troubleshoot, and adapt. I bring that clarity back into my independent work, where I can roam more freely.

Personal work is non-negotiable for me. It’s where I get to experiment, take risks, fall back in love with the process. That’s what keeps me grounded, and open, which is crucial to keep picking up the camera.

How do you know when a photo is finished? Or is that the wrong question? I’m always fascinated by this, because no two artists ever answer it the same way.

I love that question. I think you just know. Sometimes your body even knows, there’s a kind of electricity that moves through you. A buzz, an excitement, a perfect colour or tone, or a point of darkness or lightness. A highlight. A certain shade of black. A feeling that the image has arrived, or is holding what it needs to, even if I can’t explain exactly why.

Sometimes I have to step away from it for a while. Let it breathe. Then come back and see if it still makes me feel something. If it does, then I know I’ve done my best to bring it where it was meant to land.

I also think some photographs are powerful precisely because they’re unresolved. They offer space rather than closure. And that’s enough.

As someone who's also familiar with the pace of a long day on set, I’ve noticed you love sharing some behind-the-scenes moments in your IG. The chaos, the lighting, all the little in-between stuff... What part of being on set gets you the most energized? And what part kind of drains you by the end of the day?

I love the atmosphere on set. The momentum, the collaboration, the way things start to unfold once the light is right and everyone is locked into the same rhythm. There is a magic to that moment when everything clicks into place. I’m energised by the relationships, the problem-solving, the shared creative focus. And I love capturing the quieter in-between moments. Someone adjusting a light, a fleeting expression, a soft shadow across the floor. All the details that sit just outside the frame of the final image.

There is also this very real sense of play for me. A kind of childlike fun, fucking around, being silly. It is where my most extroverted, social self comes out and is well and truly alive. I love working with my favourite people. A dream team makes all the difference. That kind of trust and creative back-and-forth is when things really come to life for me.

That said, it really depends on the job. How much creative control I have, the subject matter, the environment, the weather. All of it shapes how challenging the day can be mentally, physically, and creatively. If a shoot runs for days and there is a lot of repetition without much change in lighting, in subject matter, or in the ability to shape the outcome, it can definitely make it harder to stay focused and creatively engaged.

Holding a vision while managing energy, time, emotion, and people is a lot. I can usually feel when I have crossed the point of exhaustion and overstimulation, but I try to stay present. I have learned how to work with that rhythm and how to recover afterwards. Quiet mornings, garden time, and time offline are all essential to balancing it out.

Just to turn the spotlight inward for a moment... we all have our quieter, 3AM selves. What keeps you up at night (besides deadlines)?

Sometimes it’s the sheer speed of everything. The pressure to keep up, to stay relevant, to make something lasting while also surviving. Other times it’s the quieter stuff. Wondering if I’ve been present enough with the people I love. Wondering what I’ve missed while trying so hard not to fall behind.

Then there’s the big stuff. The state of the planet. The vanishing of species. The grief that feels too big to carry, yet impossible to put down. Systemic violence. Misogyny. Injustice. War.And then the shapeless things. Low-level dread. Unspoken sadness. Aches in the body. The slow puzzle of aging. Not knowing how to do this life thing.

Sometimes it’s just a nervous system on high alert. But I’m learning to calm it. Slowly. It’s a practice.

And finally, because we often ask about the past or present, but I also want to know about what’s ahead: What are you dreaming of lately?

I’m currently preparing for my solo exhibition opening at Curatorial & Co. gallery in Sydney in January 2026. It’s a photographic series exploring Thai culture and my ancestry through underwater still-life images. The works intertwine plants, fish, and submerged flowers, reflecting on my mother’s birth country. The series moves through themes of ancestry and cultural memory, transformation and spirituality, and ecological grief.

I’m also hoping to publish my first monograph, bringing together a curated selection of work made between 2011 and 2023. The book serves as both a retrospective and an introduction to my visual language, one shaped by cinematic stillness, feminist inquiry, and a deep, ongoing relationship with the natural world. The photographs move between portraits of women in haunting landscapes and underwater still-life compositions of submerged flora and fish. Across both, I explore identity, memory, transformation, and the quiet resilience of the feminine.

I want to make work that feels urgent and alive. I want more time with nature. Lately, I keep circling back to ideas of movement and colour.

I dream of more space. More slowness. And, at the same time, more creative momentum, the kind that expands without burning out. I’m dreaming of a way those opposites can run together.

And always, more softness. In my work. In my relationships. In how I move through the world.

Lilli’s List

Your favorite museum or bookstore:

Museum - Centre Pompidouin Paris where I experienced the Brancusi exhibition.Bookstore - Librairie Galignanie.

The last book you read:

‘All Fours’ by Miranda July. Thrilling. There’s something about the way she writes desire, shame, curiosity, and strangeness that made me feel completely alive, like I was being let into a private room in someone’s brain. It’s messy and intimate and often hilarious, but also deeply tender.

A line that stuck with you:

“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens” - Rumi.

A tune you’ve been humming lately:

‘Sledgehammer’ by Peter Gabriel

Your favorite moment in a typical day:

My first cup of hot tea for the day :)

The last thing you saved in your notes:

A note from a friend to make sure I order a copy of 'The Third Ear': On Listening to the World.

Your favorite account you follow on IG:

Currently @atmos which focuses on climate change and the natural world