About

Georgia Hilmer is a photographer and writer based in upstate New York.

I started modeling as a teenager, taking pictures with a 35mm point-and-shoot to document that youthful time of travel and misadventure. My fixation on film has been unwavering ever since. Being primarily analog means going slow, deferring gratification, and inviting constant surprise. You think you know what's sitting right in front of you and then, going through scans weeks later, something else altogether fills the frame.

Ten years in the fashion industry taught me to think critically and compassionately about what it means to see and be seen. After trading modeling for other projects, turning photography into my full-time job, and leaving New York City, my camera has become a tool to connect with other people. My studio visit series is an exercise in daring to meet one's heroes: I reach out to the ordinary people around me creating extraordinary work, building lives defined by the artistic pursuits that are so hard to sustain in our modern world.

Becoming a mother transformed my understanding of record-making's value, the importance of bearing witness, and the limits of photography. Documenting my son's early life while struggling postpartum, sometimes the camera captured things I didn't acknowledge to myself. In other images of myself from that time, I see a performance no one else can. The record is layered and paradoxical and miraculous, true and not at the same time. I see our story anew every time I look back, my perspective altered by time and insight, the picture still but never static.

I make pictures in the hope of capturing something emotionally resonant, observing with empathy, staying with a subject long enough to find that one small and particular in-between moment that reveals something big and true about all of us. Collaborating with others - and nature - to distill that essence is the great, challenging, and thrilling honor of my life. Plus, it's so fun.

For inquiries about commissions, collaborations, or prints, please visit the contact page.