©Olivia Parker, 1975 Cinquefoil

In the 1970’s I had the good fortune to see Olivia Parker’s early work. I have followed her career ever since.  The extraordinary beauty of her photographic work is striking but that is just the beginning. It is the key to intention, as you travel deeper into what they have to communicate about light, time, and relationships. There is intimacy as well as a vast scope of significance. What an honor and a privilege to sit down with Olivia and talk about her work.  Thank you, Olivia. – Suzanne T. White

After graduating from Wellesley College with a degree in Art History, Olivia Parker began to photograph ephemeral constructions in 1973. She is interested in the way people think about the unknown.  For most of human history people have looked to the spirit world to explain what was going on.  Animals floated in the night sky, and each object had its own “Anima Motrix”, its’ own moving spirit.   By the seventeenth century clockwork explanations begin to invade the spirit world, opening doors to modern physics.  New ideas form, the old are shattered, and sometimes old ideas pop up again among the new like graffiti on a wall.  All is uncertainty and change, but optimists and bingo players are on the lookout for moments of perfect knowledge and perfect cards.

Parker’s work is in major private, corporate, and museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Peabody Essex Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum, Tokyo Fuji Art Museum and many others. There are four Parker monographs: Signs of Life, published by David Godine, 1978, Under The Looking Glass, and Weighing The Planets published by The New York Graphic Society in 1983 and 1987, and Order of Imagination, published by The Peabody Essex Museum and The University of Washington Press, 2019. There is also a self-published book, Vanishing in Plain Sight, concerning her husband’s Alzheimer’s. She has had over 100 one person exhibitions at galleries and museums. There was a major retrospective of Parker’s work at The Peabody Essex Museum in 2019.  A 1996 Wellesley Alumnae Achievement Award recipient, her residencies include Dartmouth College, MacDowell, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Aegean Center for The Fine Arts and Cassilhaus.  In 2019 she was inducted into The International Photography Hall of Fame and in April of 2025 she will be awarded the J. Sherwood Chalmers Medal by The Garden Club of America.

Parker has taught many workshops, some at colleges and graduate schools, and some at photographic organizations such as The Ansel Adams and Friends of Photography workshops and Maine Photographic Workshops.  As a visiting teacher Parker has made many new friends and often learned from them.

At present Parker is continuing work on two series: Persephone’s Graffiti, made with mushrooms and mushroom ink and powder that appear and disappear in late October, and Persephone’s Garden.  In 2024 she made photographs of blue hydrangeas in all their strange glory.  The newer work can be seen on oliviaparker.com. Also, she is beginning a new body of work concerning her ancestor Mary Estey who was hung as a witch in Salem although it was her words conveyed to the Governor that stopped the persecutions.

Parker was married to John Parker for more than fifty years, until he died from Alzheimer’s.  She has two children, five grandchildren and over the years many dogs.

Ms. Parker is represented by Robert Klein Gallery in Boston and Scheinbaum & Russek in Santa Fe.

©Oliva Parker, 1977, Orchids

STW: What drew you to photography? When did you take your first photograph, and do you remember what you photographed?

OP: I was about 10 and I was given one of those box brownies and so I took pictures with that.  I was quite intrigued.  When I was 12 or 13, I earned some money by making pastel drawings of my mother’s friend’s pets.  I decided I wanted a dog. My father said I couldn’t have a dog unless I worked in a kennel for a summer.  So, I did, and I spent the money on my 1^st good camera, and it was a nice German camera. I just started making pictures with that.

They didn’t offer any photography courses at college, but I majored in the history of art.  So, I got a good general visual background. I kept on drawing.  I got married right after college and after the birth of my two children I knew that being a stay-at-home mom was not going to be enough for me.  My neighbor was a portrait photographer who was getting a divorce, and she asked me to store her darkroom equipment.  I said I would if I could use it.  I already had a broad art background, so I started filling trash barrels with my experiments and there was no temptation to turn back. I used Ansel Adams books as a guide.  I’m glad that I had the visual reference of looking at so many kinds of art while in college.  Over the years when I was a visiting teacher, I’d find that many people had stayed just within photography when they needed to look at other art too, just to broaden their thinking.

©Olivia Parker, 1980, A Reasonable Argument

STW: Do you find you have a unifying theme in your cumulative work?  

OP: The wonder of small things that change with the light often becoming other things, speaking of many things outside the world of the studio. In photographing what I am attracted to I find that objects change because of the light and their relationship to other objects. Beauty is okay as long as there is something beyond the beauty.

©Olivia Parker, 1982, Carousel

STW: Why did you choose the still life genre, or did it choose you?  Still life has its ups and downs in popular culture but always seems to persist and rise.  Why do you think this is?

OP: The still life genre just happened. I was home with two little kids, A background in art history and teaching myself photography through experimentation using whatever was at hand or available at the beach or at nearby junk shops and flea markets. I would work during nap times and after the kids went to bed.  Soon I found that still life could go beyond the surface beauty and touch on thought and emotion.  It did not have to be a memento mori.  It could speak of life as well as death.  Marrying early and having kids early delayed my getting into the field, but then I could just go ahead.  I wasn’t worried about delaying a family.  I think it was good, and it worked for me.

©Olivia Parker, 1985, The Quarrellers

STW: What are you working on now? As you have always embraced new technologies, are you experimenting with anything new?

OP: Last summer I completed a large series of photographs of blue hydrangeas, such strange flowers and so endlessly varied that no two complex blossoms ever seem to repeat their forms.  Now I am having a lot of fun with AI.  This winter I have still not recovered fully from Covid that I caught in Italy last October, so some fun is in order.

Part of the reason why I have tried so many new things is that with the wet darkroom all my materials kept getting discontinued.   My favorite papers for split toning were retired.  I tried others but they just didn’t have the same quality. Someone from Polaroid came to me and asked if I’d like to experiment with their film.  I didn’t think about it but dove in. I hadn’t worked in color, but I learned by just doing it.  Soon those materials were discontinued as well.  Then I worked with some cibachrome, but only for a year, because it is highly toxic.  Computers came along and when I got stuck in Florida after teaching a workshop because of a snowstorm in the northeast, I decided to stay and take a Photoshop workshop. Soon after I smashed my leg in a skiing accident. During a year of recovery, it was a good time to teach myself the program.

©Olivia Parker, 1991, Order of Imagination

©Olivia Parker, 1994, Book of Broken Rules

STW: What is or was your favorite process?

OP: If I had I had to pick out a favorite process it would be split toning with Azo paper which I started to work with fifty years ago.  Not only could it be beautiful, but after it was discontinued it taught me that I could move on and not just rely on one process for the rest of my life.  Half of my photography life was analog to the extreme, view cameras and contact prints.  With many of the materials now extinct the other half has been digital with a 35mm equivalent and even my phone.  Since I like to explore new possibilities, the situation has not been a bad thing for me.  Some viewers of my work do get irritated with me for changing, but I have to keep growing and changing in order to go on exploring the possibilities of photography.

©Olivia Parker, 1999, Two Copperheads

STW: Can you tell me about your idea development?

OP: In the beginning I was rambling aimlessly trying things that I found visually interesting.  As a result, I tried out many ideas that a more controlled approach would not have yielded.  I am interested in how people think about the unknown and how we understand contemporary and old objects.  I wonder about how people understand these objects at different points in time.  While in the past the natural world was a primary influence now the manmade is imposing.  So, objects with human implications are the ones that interest me.  I work intuitively, but only part of the time.  There is a fluctuation between visual intuition and the editorial process. My intention is not to document objects but to see them in a new context where they take on a presence dependent on the world within each photograph.  Old objects have stories to tell, new materials only become interesting in context.  A bone and a machine must transform each other.

©Olivia Parker, 2008, Wing 1

©Olivia Parker, 2009, Eternity

STW: How do you start?

OP: Just recently, maybe a couple of years ago, I found this big yellow dahlia and I wanted to photograph it.  Then I thought, is there anything beyond it that I should be looking at.  Not long after, it was during the pandemic and I was finding all sorts of things, I found this wonderful snake on the driveway, and it was dead.  It was like a perfect little ouroboros and somehow it just seemed to work with that flower.  The flower was so beautiful but the snake, while beautiful, had all kinds of other implications and somehow it grants that picture deeper meaning. One advantage of using digital is that I can make new combinations long after I have made the original photographs.

©Olivia Parker, 2010, Heart and Flower

STW: If you were to have a dinner party who, in the photography world, living or dead, would you like to invite?

OP: Linda Connor, Rosamond and Dennis Purcell, and Emmet Gowin among the living.  Julia Margaret Cameron, Joseph Sudek (although he might be too shy to come), Andre Kertész, and Jerry Uelsmann.  I would ask the dead if they would like to work with the tools we have now.  Jerry found some computer tools irritating because one could make images related to what he did with elaborate darkroom magic, seem easy.  I tried to reassure him that it is the ideas that count not increased technical ease.  I think Andre would be intrigued by the idea that one could keep a camera(phone) in a pocket and make visual idea notes.  Julia Margaret might find digital work lacking in the subtle intimacy of longer exposure camera work.  I am only scratching the surface here.  I’m sure my living guests would have lots of questions just like the dead.  It would be a lively evening for all.

©Olivia Parker, 2016, What Where

STW: Who has been the most influential person in your own work?

OP: Oddly enough I would say Ansel Adams.  Someone gave Ansel my first book and he invited me to teach at his Yosemite workshops. Up until that time I knew very few other photographers.  I taught at his workshops for four years and got to know some wonderful artists. We shared work and had many interesting discussions along with some necessary silliness.  As to a direct influence on my work, I may be too close to see it, but I feel as though I am taking my own path. Ansel was the most influential professionally because he introduced me to so many people.  One thing that helped me was that I never went to a graduate school in photography.  I did have some wonderful nuts and bolts instruction from Henry Hornstein as well as participating in Minor White workshops.  One night with Minor was really funny. He had been very hard on some of the people who had brought work.  Suddenly, everybody left except Minor and me.  People had brought all this food.  Now Minor was a vegetarian and while we were talking, he ate almost a whole platter of Kentucky fried chicken.  I will never forget that evening because he had so many things to impart.  They were about life, how to imagine life, and visual things that I still think of to this day.  He was the consummate teacher. I hope he will forgive me for telling about the fried chicken.

©Olivia Parker, 2021, Persephone’s Garden, Wind

STW: What is it about transitions that appeal to you?  Please tell me about your fascination with edges.  Would you elaborate on what you have said about the ‘courage to go beyond the edge of the map. 

OP: I think it was Minor White who suggested to me the idea that when you have more than one photograph whatever happens in the space between those photographs becomes important.  There is usually more to imagine beyond the edge of a photograph.  The edge of the map or the edge of a photograph do not have the finality they imply.  Explorers have had the courage to push ahead even after coming to the edge of their maps.  It all challenges the imagination.

©Olivia Parker, 2022, Ink 110

STW: Who are some of your favorite authors?  Ones you like to read and reread.

OP: Abraham Verghese, Richard Powers, TJ Klune, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Louise Erdrich, Jodi Picoult, Elizabeth Strout, Amore Towles, Kristin Hannah, Gabriel Garcia Marguez, Geraldine Brooks, and Orhan Pamuk.

STW: That is a great lineup of writers!

©Olvia Parker, 2024, 42 Hydrangea

OP: Photography is a tough field to break into now; there is so much competition.  You must spend a lot of time working.  If you feel as though you don’t have any compelling ideas, don’t sit around thinking; get up out of that chair and take photographs.  Even if you think some of them are stupid or meaningless, eventually you can hope to see a pattern in the best ones that will teach you and steer you in a productive direction.

STW: It has been wonderful talking with you. Thank you again for taking the time to be interviewed.  I look forward to seeing some of your new work.

OP: Well, thank you too, for organizing the interview.  I’ve enjoyed this.