We had been direct messaging back and forth for probably months at that point, occasionally story swipes up expressing our admiration of each other's work, my writing, her photography. Lizzie’s Instagram acted as a sort of yearbook for my first two years living in Los Angeles. From it, I gathered the faces and names of the girls I had seen out at whatever clouted event, or maybe a show of theirs. She’d pose them in these spectral motel rooms, with pastel-patterned stick and peel wallpaper acting as a sort of throne for whatever contemporary beauty was in front of it.
It was my turn.
“Do you want me to drive?” I remember I asked.
“No, I’ll drive,” She said. By all accounts, I had known better to get into a stranger's car and drive with them east outside of the city, to some random motel. Really, anyone would know better. But I got in regardless.
What initially pulled you toward photography, and how did it turn into your career?
I guess Myspace, being excited about the world, and spending a lot of time fantasizing about other people’s lives.I’ve normally always spent a lot of time alone, but especially as a kid. I think obsessive logging and romanticizing little scenes and tableaus are probably sort of loner habits. Plus, I was raised without TV or much exposure to pop culture or even junk food, so whenever I would get a glimpse of something, it would feel sooo special.
6th grade was the first year my parents let me go unsupervised after school, mostly I would just hang out in my math teacher’s classroom til like 5 pm and ask for extra math problems or he’d let me play on his laptop while he graded homework, but sometimes I’d get invited to hangout with these girls who I thought were just the coolest ever. We'd go get ice cream at Rite Aid and hang out at this tree swing on 15th and Washington or at this scary abandoned house across from school…For some reason, we were always afraid we were going to get kidnapped, so there was this adrenaline all the time, and it was just so exciting that I had to take pictures. Then, taking pictures made it even more fun, and it became about just hanging out and taking pictures. I’d do it when I was on my own, too, though, like post a picture of my Vitaminwater on Myspace because it felt so cool to have a Vitaminwater.
In terms of it turning into a career, I’ve been getting lucky lately but I still have a lot of work to do. I shot a bunch of bands on my own in high school, but I probably got my first cool photo jobs when I was 18 from my boyfriend at the time who had a DIY record label. During college I also shot lookbooks for Shop Tunnel Vision once a week which to me, was the highest success one could achieve. I always kept up with photography in some way no matter what my day job was, mostly I’d take photos of my friends and my stuff but I’d do one off jobs for bands and clothing brands every couple of months. I’ve had a lot of other jobs in the process, art book store, Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, barista, hostess, teen goth clothing designer, and I even worked in tech for a couple of years because I was obsessed with making 3D graphics and VR games.
In that El Monte motel room, Lizzie and I became friends. We were both practically too excited to even do the shoot that we had set out to do. The lighting was low, and the air was stale, but our conversation flowed effortlessly and quickly. I’d ask her where she grew up: “Santa Monica.” She’d say, a photo would be taken, she would ask me what my favorite snack was, 'sugar-free strawberry jello,” I’d say, and she would take another. It was quite distracting but so invigorating. I had thought she was the coolest girl online, and she met my expectations tenfold. I had talked about things I was never able to talk about in Los Angeles, frankly because I thought nobody had cared (I might’ve just been hanging out with the wrong people) I remember I wore this long black dress, its skirt draped itself over the sort of Floridian orange couch with ease when she asked me what I thought of Megan Boyle. I remembered how her name sounded out loud, because I had only ever said it in my head; nobody had ever asked me what I had thought about her mainly because the people I was hanging out with had never heard of her.
Your work draws from these very niche early-2000s aesthetics without it feeling derivative. How do you approach those influences while keeping the work grounded in the contemporary?
Yeah, I don’t want to make overly staged or old-timey 2004 photos. I like things to feel somewhat natural and believable because that makes for a more compelling image to me. Part of it is about keeping the productions lowkey and fun, even when it’s like a famous person, usually I’m just dressing them in my own or their own clothes and convincing them to drive to a weird motel 4 hours away, so then in a way it is kind of real.
Along with all the time spent on tumblr and Flickr and looking at photography, I take in a lot of content that has to do with synthesizing current real life like my friends Madeline and David have this podcast I like called Pick Me Up I’m Scared, I sometimes work as Brad Troemel’s research assistant for his video essays, and I love Biz Sherbert’s American Style newsletter. When I was a little younger, I was also obsessed with mumblecore movies, Megan Boyle, Sophie Calle, Hito Steyerl, and Eve Babitz. Their work is all very different, but you get the idea.
Puma in Los Angeles, Lizzie Klein, 2025
What excites you about photography right now? And what aspects of the industry feel limiting or frustrating to you?
Hmm I get the most excited about research projects, like Maggie Dunlap’s True Crime project and the Center for Land Use Interpretation is always doing something cool with photography. In general, I still think it’s cool that social media makes everyone excited to take pictures with their friends. There are a bunch of new bands I really like right now so I want to work with them.
None of this is photography but lately I’ve been watching Chantal Ackerman movies, I’m always excited about the Cardiff Miller walks. There is this book my friend Artur made called Branding Terror, my friend Molly just interviewed Laura Parnes so I got into her movies. I’m slowly going through all of the artists who were in the 2018 Art In The Age of The Internet show at ICA Boston too because I had only skimmed through before. Whenever I’m in New York I think about that TV show Bored to Death too.
I wish a lot of these popular magazines had better curation, there is a lot of stuff I’d like to tell them to put in there!!
Between vaping and camera flashes, I’d come up for air to ask Lizzie what she thought of contemporary Los Angeles literature. We both had the same thing to say; which was virtually nothing. We talked mainly about the aforementioned mumblecore, New York lit mags, and so on. But I also asked her about her disembodied, faceless food blog/Instagram, Health Freak. I had actually discovered Health Freak before I discovered Lizzie’s main Instagram. I felt impatient for every post; it was just too good. One post would be a photo of the new McFlurry packaging (which Lizzie has deemed clinical), the next post would be a Pretty Little Liars themed diet (more so a caloric limit for the week, think of the ones you saw on Tumblr pre- self-harm and ED blog policy ban) I even had the honor of making it on there once, with my favorite mug even. It's a mug donning the typical 5 over 1 housing complexes, most recognizable with gentrification, easily one of my most prized possessions.
Anything weird and food-related, you could probably find a Health Freak post about. Its bio sports a yelp listed she’s made over the years, with actually delicious food, and spots like “Los Angeles Bakery” (which is in Brooklyn), even a marijuana dispensary that offers delivery in Washington DC. (Which she informs me was actually selling pot before it was legal in DC, alongside a purchase of a JPEG, you’d receive a “free gift”, which was just the pot)
How do you go about discovering and selecting the restaurants featured on HealthFreak? Is there a restaurant on the healthfreak list that stands out to you, or feels especially representative of the project?
I started Health Freak in 2020 as kind of a shrine to the 90s health food aesthetic that I grew up on, I had just learned about The Aesthetics Wiki and I was trying to propose it as a “-core.” Those kinds of places dominate the list because they’re my favorite. Places like Lifethyme and Caravan of Dreams are exactly it.
Whenever I have downtime like if I’m on an airplane or watching TV I scroll deep into Yelp in random cities and look at all the photos to see if there’s anything cute.
All the restaurants on the list have some kind of special thing, some more subtle than others. I am always trying to separate myself from other types of foodies, like liking the farm to table stuff is a given so I don’t think it needs to be addressed. It’s about having fun and looking at the pictures, not necessarily good food.
screenshots from @healthfreak1001 on Instagram
What ultimately determines whether something earns a healthfreak post?
If I like the vibe
New York or LA? (My way of asking if you’re staying in LA or moving east. Sad face)
It’s been fun to be in New York for a little while and get a change of scenery. I’ll definitely stay a bit longer. There’s much better movie programming here between Anthology, IFC, Film at Lincoln Center, Metrograph, and the movies they play at Moma, etc.
I'm living in this weird old extended-stay building that makes me feel like I'm at The Barbizon or something, so every day feels really special.
Lizzie’s building in New York
Anything you’re excited to work on? Or should that best be kept a secret?
I’m excited to keep taking pictures of girls in New York. My friend just found a restaurant in Queens the other day that has a giant peppermint candy painted on the front of it so I’m going to shoot there in a day or two.
For a while now, I’ve been planning to start a small art book press so I always have that in the back of my head. I have a long list of photographers and projects people have done that need to be preserved and given more attention.
Lizzie’s photography doesn’t fall neatly into one category, at least not verbally. She is known for her spectral images that provoke loneliness, alongside the rivaling feeling that the world is entirely at your fingertips. She is incredibly gifted at capturing the tension between beginnings and endings, as if something could be born or die at any moment. Even after being her friend for years, I still find myself unsettled when trying to describe her work. It’s eerie yet familiar, sterile yet septic. It’s a difficult thing to put into words.
You could reach for the obvious labels. Maybe a hint of twee, mallgoth, fruitger aero even. You could borrow the phrase “millennial optimism,” as Rian Phin does in her TikTok analysis of Lizzie’s work. But there’s something distinct that sets Lizzie apart from these aesthetics, because none of this is exactly unheard of. You could open Instagram right now and find countless brands and creators attempting to resurrect niche Y2K aesthetics, which aren’t niche anymore. A homogenized internet has sanctioned monoculture so thoroughly that even coworkers I share little in common with recognize terms that once had to be unearthed from obscure corners of the web, carefully cultivated on Tumblr dashboards we built brick by brick. Yet these brands and creators almost always fail.
Lizzie’s work stands tall because it offers sentimentality without denying the future. It doesn’t collapse under nostalgia or become sick from it. Instead, nostalgia operates as a retrofuturist lens, a way of looking at the contemporary and reminding ourselves that we will one day feel sick for this time. That its new, now, but won't be one day. She, by all accounts, defies hauntology without obliviously denying its existence, an impressive feat for any artist in this day and age.