LensCulture: I understand that it wasn’t always your intention to be a photographer. Tell me a bit about your life and career before you went into photography, and what inspired you to switch paths?

Pixy Liao: I didn’t have a formal background in photography because I grew up in China, and art education is not something that you’re told is a good path. I went to school for something else entirely, graduated from university with a random major and started working as a graphic designer. After a while, I realized this was not a good job, because I always had to listen to what my client wanted, and I hate that. I really just wanted to do my own thing without anyone changing my work. I saw the 1960s thriller Blow-Up, and in the film there’s a fashion photographer who takes photographs and makes tons of money, and I thought to myself, that seems like a good job! So I decided to change my career, and I went to the United States to study the medium.

LC: What did your first images look like when you started using the medium, and how has that style changed?

PL: Because I didn’t have a formal art background, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I went to school in Memphis, which is a beautiful city to photograph in, and I actually started out photographing landscapes. Then I started to photograph portraits of my friends. They were fun, but still quite normal, and I felt like I wasn’t finding myself. During my time in school, I got to know my boyfriend, and I started photographing him. I had to do a photo assignment that somehow related to death, so I asked him to play the dead body in my photographs as a prop. People started commenting on my images because I was using him in this way – as a prop rather than a human being.