Lafayette Artist Olivia Luz Perillo’s Tranquil Landscapes

April 1, 2024

John R. Kemp,

Olivia Luz Perillo, a Lafayette native who now resides in nearby Grand Coteau, is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, musician, artist and social justice activist whose spirit, imagination and art move easily between the natural watery landscape of South Louisiana and the deserts of her ancestors along the Texas, Arizona and Mexican borders. Symbolically, she often juxtaposes images from these “ecosystems” and cultures to help her “shift inward and explore ancestral healing.”

Perillo began this “inward” journey as a child during frequent family car trips from Louisiana to visit her mother’s family in the small town of Fabens, Texas, about 30 miles east of El Paso. “I became inspired by the changing landscape between South Louisiana and far West Texas, witnessing similarities and overlaps between the cultures that bounced back and forth between my life experiences.”

In creating her “ancestral healing” images, Perillo often places scanned-in, faded black-and-white family photos into full color images of desert landscapes where her ancestors have lived for generations. In that sense, she considers herself an archivist of family stories and photos that keep her connected to her people.

“As soon as I started photographing West Texas,” she says, “I became aware of how important documentary work was in telling my story, while excavating my family’s stories and origins through the land and environment they were born into. I was probably 18 when I realized being a full-time photographer could be a career path. I started working with musicians towards the end of high school, photographing my friends’ bands and making occasional short videos.”

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Perillo’s interest in photography began when she was five with her Barbie camera. She was fascinated that with the click of the camera, “time and memory could be frozen into an image forever.” That fascination continued into her early teens. Although she didn’t take photography classes while attending the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, her courses in graphic design, drawing, painting and printmaking greatly influenced her photography when it came to, as she says, “considering light, color and composition.”

Perillo left college after a couple of years to take jobs at Parish Ink and Red Arrow Workshop in Lafayette. There, she learned how to run a business and sell her prints, handcrafted necklaces and “essential oil blends” under the name of “Indigo Light” at pop-up markets across South Louisiana. When she was 24, Perillo began freelancing full time — primarily photographing and promoting local musicians. Then in 2018, she and her business partner Syd Horn made a short video documentary, “Migration,” which played in eight countries. They followed that up the next year with the documentary, “Intention.” Both features are on YouTube. Perillo and Horn now make music videos and documentaries under the name Honest Art.

Through it all, Perillo’s work has gained national attention. She’s done work for Chanel and in 2019, The Marshall Project hired her to document a Baton Rouge woman whose partner was imprisoned at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The story also appeared in the New York Times. In 2022, Harper Collins commissioned her to create a collaged image for the dust jacket of a colleague’s forthcoming nonfiction true crime book.

Looking over Perillo’s body of work, her ever-present connection to the natural world is clear. It’s her favorite place to be.

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“I’ve been fascinated with color and light gradients, form and composition, plants, landscapes and the cosmos for as long as I can remember,” she says. “Very early on, I realized how healing and meditative it was to be present with them, knowing it would be an art practice I would continue throughout my life.”

When out in nature with her camera, she prefers the light around sunset through dusk. For, as she says, “the colors illuminate themselves in a way unlike any other as they have a specific feel of softness while continuously getting darker. It’s flattering on the shapes of people’s faces when making portraits. Metaphorically, it serves as an alignment with the shadow self.”

Perillo, describing herself as a “Chicana-Italian American artist who happened to be born into a Cajun and Creole culture,” also sees her work in terms of social justice, intergenerational healing and what she describes as the effects of “American imperialism” on her own bloodline. Working towards change “within creative mediums is an activism I am passionate about.”

Looking deeper into the many underlying issues, Perillo says her images “serve as a portal of tranquility and a space for personal reflection, gratitude for and healing with the land and self.” In that sense, her landscapes and collaged images call to mind what the Navajo describe as “hozho,” roughly defined as living in peace, balance and harmony with nature.

“I receive a lot of inspiration from nature,” she says, “as it is always changing and is cyclical, much like our human experience with birth, growth and inevitable death. Capturing these moments is becoming increasingly more important to witness over time and another reminder of the temporality of all existence.”