Dark Matter
Alannah
Lead us to Water
Dress and War
A Sense of Belonging
Underworld
Artist’s Statement
Although my art practice explores many different subjects, an ongoing preoccupation is capturing women in landscape. With their identities hidden and glowing bodies melding into the natural world around them, they encourage the viewer to look twice, beneath the surface of the work.
I photograph women to empower both them and myself, bringing forth their strength and raw, honest edges.
Melbourne-based Lilli Waters was raised in a handbuilt, mudbrick home on a commune in New South Wales. There was no running water or electricity, but she had the bush as her closest companion. The urge to be close to water and the natural world has stayed with her ever since — and today, she expresses her connection through her fine art photography.
She comes from a family line of women artists. Her mother is a well-regarded botanical artist, and her grandmother was a photojournalist during the Vietnam War and a former Australian of the Year. Both had a strong sense of social activism and a love for nature, and Lilli’s unusual upbringing instilled those same values in her.
Her work has been published in magazines such as Elle, Yen, Art Aesthetica, Vogue Living and Real Living, and her photographs featured in the films Fifty Shades Darker in 2017 and Fifty Shades Freed in 2018. Her work ‘As the World Falls Down’ was a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize, and her photographic series ‘Others Dream’ was highly commended in Australasia’s Top Emerging Photographers Award in 2019. Lilli was invited to create a self-portrait for the ABC Art Bites documentary series Mirror in 2018 and to hold a solo exhibition at Craig’s Royal Hotel in collaboration with the Ballarat International Foto Biennale in 2019.
Selected artworks are represented by Metro Gallery, Modern Times and Curatorial & Co. Find more from Lilli at her website.