Jill Sutherland
- Jan 26
- 3 min read
Jill Sutherland is a portrait photographer and mixed media artist based in Topanga, California. She uses in-camera multiple exposure and decides the final image during the shoot, without heavy digital reworking later. Alongside photography, she brings in vintage postcards, handwritten letters, and found objects, placing them next to or within her portraits. Long conversations with the people she photographs, and an interest in memory, belief, and personal history, guide her. She is drawn to spiritual and philosophical questions and returns to them over many years of work.
Q: You work with photography, collage, and installation. How do you decide which medium to start with for a new piece?
A: Photography is the foundation of my work. It’s the anchor—the moment of capture. Everything else unfolds in response.
I also collect found objects and overlooked fragments, things gathered intuitively over time. Some pieces begin with an image; others begin with an object that’s been quietly waiting to be brought into use.
Q: How did multiple exposure become part of your way of working?
A: Multiple exposure became central to my practice through "The Circle of Doors Tarot", a collaborative project created with my dear friend Anne Staveley. She was the first person to introduce this approach to me. What followed was a ten-year creative ritual: 78 unique photoshoots, each corresponding to a tarot archetype, all created in camera. Working this way allows for human imperfection, chance, and intuition to remain visible. I’m drawn to the honesty of that process. Rather than relying on heavy digital manipulation, multiple exposure invites a kind of surrender—an acceptance that the image will become what it wants to be.
Q: "Return to Sender" is built from postcards and correspondence. How did this series come together?
A: I’ve always been drawn to the intimacy of handwritten letters—when “dropping a line” required time, care, and intention. Vintage postcards feel like emotional time capsules, carrying longing, tenderness, and the residue of lives once lived.
"Return to Sender" comes from "Correspondence", an ongoing series that pairs contemporary portraits with vintage postcards sourced from around the world.
The images are either printed directly onto the postcards or created through multiple exposure.
Each work holds two timelines at once: the present of the portrait and the past embedded in the handwritten message. Together, they form a quiet meditation on connection, distance, and our enduring impulse to reach across time.
Q: In "DNR", you introduce the figure of the sacred clown. How did the clown become part of this work?
A: I met Gregory at a house party where he performed as an erotic dancer. At first glance, it would have been easy to project assumptions onto him—his tattoos, his intensity, the theatricality of his presence.
But his performance surprised me: it was wild, risqué, and deeply ritualistic.
When we spoke afterward, I discovered an unexpected gentleness and zen intelligence beneath the surface. It became clear to me that what he embodied so naturally was the archetype of the sacred clown—the figure who wears the mask, disrupts norms, and reveals truth through humor, vulnerability, and contradiction.
That recognition led to "Laugh Now, Cry Later", a series exploring duality, performance, and the tenderness hidden beneath our defenses.
Q: When you work with layering and fragmentation, how do you know when to stop?
A: With multiple exposure, restraint is essential. There’s a point at which too many layers can muddy the image and dissolve its intention. I stay in conversation with the work as it’s unfolding—watching closely, responding intuitively, and adjusting as needed. Most of my practice is rooted in straightforward portraiture. Multiple exposure is something I reserve for specific series where it serves the concept. In fact, many works in
"Correspondence" are simple portraits, later printed on vintage postcards. Knowing when to stop is really about listening—recognizing when the image has said enough.
Q: What do you find yourself returning to again and again in your work?
A: I return, again and again, to spiritual and philosophical contemplation—both my own and that of the people I photograph. I’m deeply interested in legacy and in creating images that feel as though they could exist outside of time. That romantic pursuit—of making something that endures, that carries meaning forward—is what keeps drawing me back to the work.
