Lilly Bendy

Every now and then someone walks into the studio and it immediately feels like you’ve known them for years.

Not in a loud, back-slapping kind of way. More the quiet familiarity you get when conversation doesn’t need warming up first. We chatted for a bit, moved some lights around, drank coffee that was probably too strong, and gradually slipped into making photographs.

Lilly is an actor working across television and theatre and is based in Manchester after training at the Arden School of Theatre. 

If you spend any time around actors you start to notice something interesting. Some arrive ready to perform. Others arrive curious about what might happen.

Lilly falls into the second category.

Which is good for the sort of portraits I like making.

We kept things very simple. Studio light. Black and white. No props, no big concept, just space to experiment a little. I often find that removing distractions lets the person come forward a bit more. Or at least it gives us somewhere quiet to start.

Actors tend to be very aware of their face, which sounds obvious but it matters. A small shift in the eyes, a slight turn of the head, the way someone settles into stillness. Those tiny changes become the whole picture.

At one point we started playing with movement. Not big dramatic gestures. Just small shifts between frames. Turning slightly, looking away, looking back again. The sort of thing that would probably seem like nothing if you watched it happen in real time.

But the camera catches those in-between moments.

That’s where this portrait came from.

There’s a slight blur across the face, almost like two expressions sitting on top of each other. I always like images that feel a bit unresolved. Not messy. Just human. Like you’re seeing someone think.

We talked a bit about theatre as well. The strange thing about acting is that the audience only ever sees the finished performance. The months of rehearsal, the awkward early versions of a scene, the moments where something suddenly clicks… all of that disappears.

Portrait sessions feel a little like rehearsals sometimes.

A space where things don’t have to land perfectly. We can try things, discard them, circle back again. Some frames work. Others definitely don’t. And occasionally something quietly interesting appears when nobody is trying too hard.

I think that’s what happened here.

Lilly has that slightly thoughtful presence actors sometimes carry when they’re between characters. Not performing, not entirely switched off either. Just attentive.

We shot for about an hour in total. Nothing rushed, nothing particularly dramatic. Just a slow build of small variations.

When I look back at the images now, they feel a bit like meeting someone halfway between stillness and movement. Which, oddly enough, feels quite fitting for someone whose work usually happens on stage.

If you’re curious about what Lilly is up to outside the studio, you can find her here:

Instagram: Lilly

And if you’ve ended up here because you’re thinking about having portraits taken yourself… well, this is roughly how they tend to go.

A conversation.

A bit of curiosity.

Some light.

And eventually, something that feels like you.

James Melia, Manchester portrait photographer.