Lynn Alleva Lilley

The term ‘deep time’ refers to geological time and encompasses the age of the earth which scientists estimate to be about 4.5 billion years old. The photographs in this book were made in Lewes, Delaware, surrounding beaches and in laboratory using microscopes and emerged from an intense period of learning about the world of the horseshoe crab which unexpectedly became a sort of muse for Lynn Alleva Lilley (US).

No animal deserves the title ‘living fossil’ more than the horseshoe crab, seemingly unchanged since before the age of dinosaurs. A Japanese myth claims that they are the reincarnation of the souls of Japanese samurai warriors roaming the bottom of the sea. But it is the spawning of the horseshoe crab during the night’s high tides of the new and full moons of May and June that is especially thrilling. The horseshoe crab’s response to these universal forces, which has continued for more than 450 million years, triggers us to imagine ‘deep time’ and human’s emergence from it.

Through her poetic way of photographing Alleva Lilley manages to capture the wondrous beauty of our planet and the mystic life of the horseshoe crab in many different ways, resulting in an immersive photo book which references encyclopedias and the illustrative 19th century books on nature.

By the confluence of art and science Deep Time ponders our place in time, in evolution and in the whole of all life forms.

Including an essay by research-based storyteller Helen J. Bullard.

Lynn Alleva Lilley is an American photographer born in Washington, DC and currently living in Silver Spring, MD. At the core of her photographic work is connection with place and nature. She has a particular interest in the photobook as a uniquely intimate way of presenting her photographs. Her first photobook, Tender Mint, includes photographs made in Jordan (2011-2014) which embody loss, grief, and surprising, otherworldly beauty. The photographs in her photobook, Deep Time (Spring 2019), present the mysterious life and world of the Atlantic horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus. Lynn began as a self-taught photographer over 25 years ago and later studied with photographer Terri Weifenbach in Maryland and Washington, D.C.… (mer)

Tender Mint is a photo book about displacement, loss, entrapment, adaptation and home. It is also about discovering beauty in often difficult and contradictory situations. The book offers a unique way of looking at the world that opens the door to possibility and hope.

When she moved with her family to Amman, Jordan, she was uncertain how she would be perceived as an American and a woman. The war in Syria had just begun a few months earlier and refugees were entering Jordan joining Iraqi refugees who had fled the war in Iraq. Throughout this period, Jordan remained surprisingly stable. On a deeper, personal level, she carried in her heart the knowledge that her father, who was ill, would likely pass away while she was in Jordan. This created tension and a motivation for her, through photography, to go out and try to make sense of what she was seeing and feeling.

Alleva Lilley was drawn to places that were fairly self-contained, confined and paradoxical. For example, a bird sanctuary located at a water treatment plant in a military zone near the border with Israel. Little by little she gained accustomed to the patterns of life there and saw how she could fit in. After that, threads emerged and photographing became a meditative process as well as an exploration.

Then, the loss of her father deepened and altered the work. The more she saw and photographed with sustained focus, the more worlds within worlds opened up which lead to an epiphany in a zoo. The entrapment and metaphor was obvious, but strange worlds were revealed including unexpected connections to the animals and their environment. Many of the images have a fairytale-like quality to them bringing them close to poetry.

Alleva Lilley also photographed landscapes at the Dead Sea, a biodynamic vineyard near the Syrian border, a veterinary clinic in Petra and small villages. She portrayed Syrian and Iraqi refugees as well as Jordanian citizens. Her otherworldly images expresses conflicting emotions such as nurturing and pain, suffering and resignation, solitude and companionship and beauty and decay.

Tender Mint contains two poems by Jane Hirshfield and Samih al-Qasim and two personal anecdotes by the author.

About Lynn Alleva Lilley
In September 2011, Lynn Alleva Lilley moved with her family to Amman before moving back to Silver Spring, Maryland in August 2014. She is currently residing in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Her work has been published by numerous outlets, such as The Financial Times, Newsweek, The Times (London), The Washington Post, Courrier International, and the National Public Radio. Lynn has also taught photography to foreign students in Jordan as well as young Jordanians in several refugee camps.… (mer)