Liza May Post

Liza May Post (b. 1965, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is interested in the in-between moments, the transition between leaving and staying, disappearing and appearing.

The photographs are quiet moments but they exude a sense of something bigger or more dangerous just about to take place – the calm before a storm which may never come. Her photos are not spontaneous snapshots, rather they have been staged down to the smallest detail. The same is true for her video works, such as Trying (1998). Post herself often even designs the costumes which her subjects wear, generally leaving a bit of (vulnerable) skin visible.

Speaking about her photograph, Langzamer leven (A Slower Life), Post has said:

“My work is often about the attempt to want to be there, whilst at the same time also not wanting to be. About the choice between coming and going. The idea of coming or going differs from person to person, and how someone sees that really says more about that person than about the intention of the work. It is one of the strong effects this work has on people.
At the time, I imagined she had arrived in a world that had already been designed but was still empty and open. Now I also look at it differently.”