At Home with Pia-Paulina Guilmoth

It's rare to come across an artist’s work where you can’t easily divine its inspirations—where the gestures, references, and rhythms feel entirely internal. Pia-Paulina Guilmoth’s photographs do just that. Her images seem to emerge not from art history or genre but from lived rituals, half-remembered dreams, and the shifting boundaries of identity and place. There’s a feeling of nearness in the work, as though everything—plants, moths, people, weathered furniture—has been invited in rather than arranged. Her new book, Flowers Drink the River, builds on years of photographing in and around her home, but it marks a new kind of clarity: softer, more assured, and wholly present.

We recently sat down with Pia-Paulina to talk about the role of the night, the natural world, and what it means to photograph from a place of transition, both emotional and physical.

S/B What was the first image you remember having a connection to? 

PPG: I really don’t remember what the first image would have been… I do remember I was really young when I found a family photograph of my grandpa cutting up a deer with an axe in our basement. I also have a vivid memory of this old painting near our wood stove that shows a young girl herding sheep through this lush field of wheat.

S/B: How would you describe your connection to the natural world?

PPG: Respect and fascination that is totally removed from logic and rationality. It’s about the beauty of things, and the way things look.  Nature has been a constant reminder of change, growth, and letting things die, then resurrect.

S/B What is it that attracts you to the night?

PPG: I’ve always been a night person. The reasons for that attraction have changed throughout my life though. When I was younger the night was a time when I was free and my friends and I could wander around the woods, smoke weed, break into abandoned houses, and get up to mischief. It was also a time of tranquility, and wonder growing up. Witnessing deer, foxes, moths and the sound of nature unobstructed by human activity. 

Now the nighttime is a place of safety more than anything. Living in a very small rural town of about 1,500 residents, most people seem to retire to their homes when the sun sets. Since beginning my transition I have had to be very deliberate, and diligent about my surroundings and the potential threats around me at all times. I am no longer safe to be in many places in my town, even around my home, especially with a giant camera in tow during the day. Where I live isn’t exactly the safest place for a trans woman to exist, and there isn’t the same access to other queer/trans community that one might have in a city, or a liberal coastal town.

At night I can move slowly and take my time photographing without the fear of being followed or harassed. Obviously there is always the threat of someone seeing my flashlight in which case I would potentially be in even more danger than if it were during the day, but at this point I have found many places where that hasn’t happened. 

 

S/B Many of your photographs resist a fixed time or place. Is timelessness something you actively pursue?

PPG: I always seem to resist specificity when it comes to time and place. My photographs  feel untethered to any specific thing most of the time. And this is just the way I shoot and the tools that I use (lighting, avoiding horizons, using a massive and cumbersome camera).. I think this is changing though with my recent work in many ways…

S/B: You’ve spoken about the emotional and physical changes you went through during the process of this work coming into being. This book builds on motifs from your previous work. Has your subjects meaning shifted in that process?

PPG: I feel as though I am always making one continuous body of work, as i’ve literally always just photographed my home and the people I love. The meaning has shifted as my reality, and my life circumstances, and relationships have changed. I think my previous book At Night Gardens Grow was made at a time of intense anxiety and longing. I was working way too much at my day job as an elderly caregiver. Often 60 hours a week. I was also so miserable at that time. I hadn’t yet transitioned, and didn’t really have a community to relate my trans experience too. I was closeted, and just trying to avoid facing the reality and the earth shattering changes that I needed to undergo. Flowers Drink the River was made at a time when I had finally started my transition, and was learning to finally love myself and take care of myself. Because of that I feel like it is a release of emotions and joy.

S/B: The book is littered with people you know deeply - would you describe your images as portraits? 

PPG: I think in it’s entirety it’s like a portrait of home. Many of the images are of the natural world, and these small little rituals that I have constructed, or conjured, with animals, plants, and insects. I feel as though I am making sculptures most of the time. There is an element of play and experimentation that is very much about the experience of seeing something, becoming obsessed, and then finding ways of collaborating with it to make a scene that can speak to my feeling of awe I have with whatever it is i’m photographing.

S/B: Is this book more of a fable or a diary? 

PPG: A diary. I am to present in my own life now to feel like I need to attach myself to myths and storytelling. This book is the evidence of my world and the things around me that bring me life, and beauty and belonging.