Episode 13 - Let Me Take A Selfie with Linnea Bullion (Photographer/Art Director)

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‘I want people to know that I exist! Here’s a record of me!'

Julia Georgallis

May 21, 2023

Episode 13’s guest, photograph Linnea Bullion

Hello friend,

Episode 13, ‘Let Me Take A Selfie’ with LA-based photographer and art director Linnea Bullion is out today! I met Linnea at an artists’ retreat in Sweden a few years ago (I was doing the cooking, not the arting) and have been a fan of her bright, fun photographs, in particular of her selfies, ever since.

Selfies are the ultimate symbol of our times. We live in the age of the individual, where we are encouraged to put ourselves first over others — we are all our own celebrity now and, if we are all our own celebrity, we must also be our own photographer. Selfies get a bad rap, they are synonymous with narcissism and exploitation, have been banned from the beauty spots and viewpoints of many towns and cities across the world to discourage tourists from overrunning them and have even lead to the untimely deaths of hundreds of people who might have misstepped whilst focussing on their own image a little too intently.

But, at the same time, self portraits, from which the modern day selfie has taken a lofty tumble, are an established and well loved art form. Rather than exploitative, I see the self portrait/selfie as empowering. Replicating our own image and putting it out into the world on our own terms is a way of us having control over our own lives. This is where Linnea’s work fits in — there are no ‘thirst traps’ in her work or the idea that these were taken for anyone else other than herself and this is a joyful thing to see. This episode covers why and how Linnea started taking photos of herself and why she always keeps, I quote ‘chicken on hand…’ in her fridge at all times. We also discuss Linnea’s relationship to California and its roadtrip-potential of which she writes about beautifully here.

‘Let Me Take A Selfie’ is published alongside a recipe for chicken fried rice for one person and one person only. Thankyou to Linnea for her time, you can see more of her work here, read this nice thing that The Washington Post wrote about her and listen to her podcast, Brodyfest, which focusses on the work of Adrian Brody here (I didn’t know that I needed this podcast, but I did and you do too).

‘Dirty 30’ sad housewife series, Linnea Bulion

Transcript - Interview with Linnea Bullion by Julia Georgallis

Hi, welcome back to the How to eat alone podcast, with me, Julia Georgallis. I’m a baker and I write about food. This podcast discusses issues surrounding loneliness, solitude and solo dining. In it, I talk to different people about various aspects of being alone. Every episode comes with a recipe based on a meal that we’ve discussed during the show and each of these recipes are designed to be cooked and eaten by one person and one person only, because most recipes are written for two or more people, which is a bit annoying for the solo cook. The idea is that you can cook along whilst you listen to this podcast if you do find yourself by yourself. Think of this podcast as your dining buddy.

Though loneliness is still a taboo subject in our society, ironically, we also live arguably quite selfish times - age of The Self. We celebrate the individual and encourage prioritising ourselves over other people and with the arrival of social media we are all kind of mini celebrities now offering a kind of running commentary over every aspect of our lives. I think a true symbol of these times is the selfie. I mean you already know this but for the people in the back, a selfie is a self portrait, typically taken when holding our smart phones at arms length. The word selfie made its way into the Oxford Dictionary as ‘word of the year’ in 2013, although it first appeared on the internet in 2002, when an Australian man posted a photo of himself online to seek advice for some medical treatment that he had just received. And because Australian English typically shortens a lot of words, the man’s online self portrait became his selfie.

Selfies are not always painted in a positive light. They can be seen as being a somewhat narcissistic pursuit. Many towns across the world have branded selfies public nuisances, banning them from beauty spots and viewpoints to stop them from being overrun by tourists with outstretched arms. And they’re also a bit of a health hazard - between 2011 and 2018, 259 people had been reported to have died whilst taking a selfie. Selfies can also be sexually exploitative, with many young people, particularly young women post selfies not for themselves but for the male gaze.

But, conversely, the selfie doesn’t have to be exploitative. The self portrait has been used throughout time, as a form of self expression and that’s really empowering. Self portraiture can be a subversive form of control because we can post images however we want the world to see us, not how the person on the other side of the camera wants the world to see us. And this has been very important for people who don’t have have the kind of quote un quote look or quote un quote body type that mainstream media has always shown us so we can use selfies to promote different standards of beauty and to promote different lifestyles by posting images that may not have made it to the front page of a magazine just a few years ago.

My next guest, Linnea Bullion, a freelance photographer and art director, takes the most marvellous selfies. She dreams up characters, takes photos of herself as these characters to create these really dynamic and fun and curious narratives. In some of her photos she’s been an astronaut, she’s been a scientist, she’s been a sad housewife. I’ve always really loved these images. I met Linnea a few years ago when we were both at the same artists retreat in Sweden, but I haven’t seen so much of her since the pandemic as travel has obviously been quite difficult, so I look at the images she takes and try and guess what’s going on in her life. I invited her to talk to me about what her self portraits mean to her.

Hi Linnea. Thanks for being on my podcast!

Happy to be here!

It’s nice to speak to you. Tell me who you are and what you do, what does your work focus on?

So, I am a photographer primarily based in Los Angeles. The tricky question of whenever people ask me ‘well what do you shoot,’ I always feel a little guilty like I should have more of a set answer, people are always like ‘you need to have a niche’ and I’m always like ‘but I wanna do everything!” But I will say that primarily I tend to shoot very bright and joyous and optimistic things.

Yeah you’re not a moody black and white photographer are you

No, I’ve tried and it just, it never seems to stick. The occasional moodiness but usually moodiness with purpose. I feel like when I tend to lean moody in any kind of photos it’s usually poking fun at it somehow, it’s like moody with a wink.

(They laugh)

And do you have certain things that you focus on, like certain subjects?

Not necessarily, as with anything that you turn into your job, the things that get me money aren’t not always necessarily the things that I would shoot on my own though there is a fair amount of overlap which is nice but otherwise I would say there is the more kind of personal work I focus on I do a lot of self portraits.

Which I love

And those are mostly just practise for me, it’s a fun way to figure out how to light things when it’s just me and I don’t have to worry about ‘am I taking up someone’s time and taking too long?’ or if it doesn’t work it’s only me… it’s just easier to kind of have just me accountable.

That’s what I’m really interested in in your work is your selfies and your kind of self portraits. Why did you start doing that? Or was it just because everybody takes selfies?

It was fear! No… I mean it kind of was fear. When I really started shooting them with a bit more of a purpose, was I was living at home still with my parents, I’d just graduated college and I was scared to try and do test shoots with models. I didn’t know how to do it, I didn’t know how to reach out to an agency or models and find the model. And so I was like ‘well… I guess I’ll just shoot photos of me!’ and so it started out of fear, which I will say I’ve gotten over, so that’s good.

Yeah, you don’t strike me as like a shy person.

I dunno, it’s the same with anything, as I’ve grown more confident in my work it’s gone away but it’s taken a really long time. I think as with many things I held myself back the most because I was not confident in how I shot and really probably only within the past four years have I been like ‘oh yeah I know what I’m doing, this is good, ok I’m fine with this…’

Yeah. But you’ve still kept on taking self portraits even though you feel more confident.

Yes.

I mean it’s fun and you know I get to be extra goofy with it. I feel like I always have these characters in my brain. Just, you know, growing up on movies and whatever. I studied film in university, and for a while I was like ‘oh I’m gonna go into the movies!’ and then realised that I did not like video, um, but I think that kind of quality of a character is my favourite part of shooting.

So do you think taking selfies has made you more confident in your ability?

I think so. You know, I’ve gotten, probably, the best feedback from those just in that I’ve gotten some press for them, I’ve gotten really great portfolio reviews from them. And I think too with something like that where it’s very clearly me and it’s very clearly, I don’t want to say low-fi in that I’m still lighting it and everything but I think I’ve had a lot of responses from photo editors and whatnot of people being like ‘oh so you lit, shot and retouched these by yourself’ which is not always something that photographers can do, usually you can hire people out for those separate jobs and so it’s been nice to be able to show ‘yeah! I can do all those things!’ I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s necessarily that they’ve made me personally more confident, like I tend to be a fairly confident person, gregarious person in general but I do think professionally they have made me more confident.

That’s really interesting though that you’ve said that people are interested in them. And people are really fascinated by self portraits and self portraiture in general for hundreds of years. Why do you think that is? Like why are people interested in people who take photos and paint themselves?

I know the reasons why I do it. I think for a long time, growing up, I’m the youngest of four kids so by the time I came around there’s not any pictures of me as a child.

(They laugh)

Like my parents were just done right? And so I think for me, partially that, partially being behind the camera, where I’m like ‘I want people to know that I exist! Here’s a record of me! Maybe it’ll just fall into the void that is our digital culture now but for a moment I have the stage… but… your question - I don’t actually know why other people are fascinated with that. I think maybe it feels like there’s so much more personality. It’s almost like reading poetry to me in that in my head when I read poetry I always assume the writer is speaking personally when a lot of times people just write poems about whatever right? When I read it I’m like ‘oh my god this person went through the craziest thing ever!’ Because it’s written in this poem and I feel like that’s what self portraiture is too sometimes where it’s like ‘oh my gosh, this person feels this certain way clearly because it’s them in the photo and they shot the photo which is maybe not necessarily accurate.

People always kind of put a trauma on it don't, it’s they it’s kind of like they treat everything like it’s Vincent Van Gough.

What are mine? Mine are very goofy sad housewives and er… (she laughs)

Yeah but when I look at your portraiture, for example, the sad housewife series I was like ‘what was Linnea thinking?! Is there a story? Did something happen?’ But… it didn’t… are you saying it didn’t?

No. Honestly a lot of them start with an outfit, I’ll have the outfit - ‘oh shit this is a great outfit I need to make a character with this so…

Fair enough! But you take them every year on your birthday right?

I do! It’s actually outside of my birthday as well - I’ll do them throughout the year kind of whenever and then I do tend to have one for my birthday and one for what I call my LosAngeversary which is my yearly however long I’ve been in LA. But then I have A TONNE that I just do outside of that as well.

You sort of said that people are also interested because it’s also technically quite difficult - what are the most difficult things about taking a photo of yourself?

I mean I just made a face because I’m like ‘I don’t know how very, VERY difficult it is…’ I don’t want to put too much on it…

It’s not that hard guys

I mean I think what it is it’s just like the planning process of it - I use a remote when I do it, I use a remote and a timer so that I am making sure and I’ll usually take multipes at a time… I used to do it where I’d just have a hand hit in, in some of my earlier ones you can tell that I’m hiding my hand because I was too lazy to do the timer but now I usually try to make sure ‘Oh look! Both hands!’ The magic of technology! I think too, it’s just like lighting wise, the only tricky thing is obviously there’s a lot of running back and forth between your camera and where you’re going to be and the thing I do really like about when it’s not me as the subject is that I’m able to get a lot closer than I would be… I think there’s a certain amount of distance in all of my self portraits because I have to set the focal length to a certain point. I have to have a little tiny window of where I can stand and where the camera can be and it’s just, it makes it trickier. I have photos that I love but can’t use because it’s slightly out of focus and that bothers me and that is just the nature of it as well you have to be like ok well that one didn’t work.

Interesting that there’s more distance when you’re taking a photo of yourself.

Yeah you would think it would be the other way around. It’s purely a practical thing right?

And so in terms of other things that you do by yourself - do you like being by yourself? Do you like doing stuff on your own?

Yeah I do. I’d say I’m a very extroverted introvert. I’m the person who will go to 5 parties in a weekend but then I’m like ok nobody talk to me I’m going to play video games for 3 days straight. So yeah I think there’s a fair amount of just being alone is nice, which is interesting because I do struggle a lot with anxiety and my brain is not always the kindest, so it’s interesting to me that I do enjoy being alone so much because obviously those are the times when my inner critic is the loudest. But I do a lot of road trips and camping. I’ll go camping and hiking alone a lot. It’s just like a really nice way to recharge.

You travel a lot as well, right, I mean I’ve met you travelling, that’s how I met you.

I mean not as much as I would like to - even with the roadtrips it’s been… you know… you know what’s going in with the world these days! Between the pandemic and inflation and just work being slow I haven’t been able to get out as often as I would like but I used to try and make it out to Europe once a year and I used to try and do at least kind of like a monthly day driving somewhere just coz California we have so many options for landscape around here which is really nice.

California is that state, isn’t it? It’s the state of roadtrips.

So I’m originally from Minnesota which is like Northern Central of the states and I did this huge, crazy road trip around basically the entire country when I was in my early 20s and part of it was because I’d never done a big American road trip and I wanted to and the other part of it was I was trying to figure out where I wanted to live and California had kind of been this pie in the sky idea for a while but I was between California and New York and then when I did that trip, oh my god I LOVE THIS, I loved being on the road and road tripping and just all of this and it’s much more accessible in California which was part of the reason I chose it over New York or Portland or anything like that.

Yeah like you chose it so you could get out of it.

I mean… yeah get out of the city.

Be by yourself basically

Well and that’s the thing about LA that I find really fascinating - people complain simultaneously about how sprawling it is but then also how lonely it is because you’re in your car on your own so much. But I actually think that’s one of the more fascinating and cool parts of LA is the fact that even if I go hiking sometimes, the greater LA area has 10 million people and I can go on a hiking trail and be the only person there and that’s crazy to me.

That’s wild.

I mean I like cities, I’m from a city and cities can be lonely right but I just thought that LA was the loneliest place I’ve ever been, actually. I didn’t not like it and you know I did a road trip by myself, I just found it the loneliest place in the world, it was really interesting to me.

Yeah and I think the way people describe it too that is very accurate it’s not actually one city, and I think the mindset coming here and being here and thinking ‘oh yeah Los Angeles, one city’ is not the right mindset, every single neighbourhood is it’s own city so you have to think of it that way, that’s the kind of thing where I’m like no wonder so many people hate it because you have to figure out what pocket fits you as well which in itself can take a really long time. Cos I have a lot of people who’ve told me ‘EUGH. LA. I hated LA. I couldn’t stay there, I had to get out, everyone there SUCKED. It was so terrible.’ And I’m always like, you were the common denominator there. It’s like anywhere, right, where it is what you make of it and actually MY biggest criticism of LA, besides the traffic which, haha yes we all know, but it’s the people who just complain about LA because every time I’m around those people I’m like ‘you’re the reason this city sucks.’ If all you do is sit around and complain about where you are, what are you doing to change it? You can either leave, you can shake things up, you can find a way to make it a more positive experience for yourself because if you sit and wallow in this space of ‘uh! This place is horrible and I hate it,’ you’re not helping anyone.

It’s up to you, it’s up to you to change it, whether it’s the pla eou live or the job you do.’

That is very good advice, it can be applied to not only the place ou live but the job you’re doing, the relationship you’re in, the place you’re in the emotional place you’re in, it only changes when you personally sit yourself down and change something internally.

Do you like to cook for yourself

I do! I do. I’m definitely someone who… I eat better when I’m cooking for others, I want to say that

EVERYONE does!

Right? We all do. I like cooking for myself. I realllyyy like to put on a shitty movie or TV show and cook. I think I’ve just been finding myself in a space where, man, it is so much more rewarding to have a meal with someone else because, you know, as with all of us struggling with distraction, whatever, when I’m eating alone I don’t tend to savour it - I try to remind myself to do that but I don’t often.

I’ve been really struggling with this because I’ve been trying to eat mindfully but I just find it really hard to concentrate on what I’m eating when I’m on my own.

Yeah. Exactly. I have always been someone who… I don’t spend money on eating out very often just because I’m always pinching pennies and whatever and I’ve gone out with people to eat more often recently and I’m like man this is something I really enjoy. It’s just like an element of something that I think I was always like ‘oh I don’t need to do it’ and now that I’ve opened myself up to it, oh this is very nice and I like it but… that has nothing to do with eating alone!

You’re finding out how you like to eat and that's important - it’s important to say if you don’t like eating alone and it’s important to say if you like eating out. I think that’s really important. Do you have things that you cook for yourself?

Yeah, I definitely have some staples. I’ll do a chicken fried rice just ‘cos it’s really easy.

Mmm delicious.

Easy to reheat, because my thing too is I’m trying to think of how is this going to reheat? Because I will be eating this for a week straight. For whatever reason pasta I hate reheating. Pasta never works for me when I reheat it.

It’s tricky.

So there’s this rice dish. I actually got really into making pizza from scratch, so yeah I do that and that has been really fun, I do that probably once a month or so, twice a month.

That’s fun. That’s like a big deal! To make your own pizza from scratch is a big deal.

It’s gotten really easy for me which is nice I know my go to way of doing it and it feels somehow healthier than buying a frozen pizza.

Oh it absolutely is! That’s so fun!

And, just you know, your basic chicken… I’ll basically cook chicken breast as a way to have chicken to throw in anything I make throughout the week so salads and whatever… just have chicken on hand.

CHICKEN ON HAND!

(They laugh)

Get me some chicken, stat!

That frozen chicken breast life, man.

Yeah that single person frozen chicken life.

Oh my god it’s true. It’s so true!

(They laugh)

I feel like I always have chicken in my fridge now.

I try to think of red meat as like a treat instead of something I buy regularly for monetary reasons.

I mean meat is expensive if you’re on your own. It’s become so expensive to feed myself. I’m not really eating so much meat even though I’m not a vegetarian anymore.

Yeah, well, I do the same thing.

Well, that was lovely, you are lovely - it was so nice to talk to you and catch up a little bit. Thanks for being on my podcast!

Thanks for having me on!

What a treat to talk to Linnea about selfies.

I think the theme that really shines through to me during our chat is, how important it is have a positive kind of control over your life and Linnea seems to have done that through her self portraits. She started taking photos of herself when she was at the very beginning of her career and she didn’t necessarily have the confidence or the access to the things that she needed to move forward. So she started with herself. And her message to the people who don’t like where they are in life, be it LA or in an emotionally bad place is to move yourself forward, right it’s to move yourself forward, no one can do it for you, you have to do it yourself. I’ve posted some links to Linnea’s work on this episode’s page. I also posted a recipe for chicken rice. The recipe and episode plus all of the other recipes and all of the other episodes on Howtoeatalone.substack.com. If you like you can subscribe for free to the Substack page and you can follow the podcast on instagram, the handle is @howtoeatlaonepodcast. If you like how to eat alone, please consider giving it a 5 star rating wherever you get your podcasts from or you can share it with someone who you think might like it too! I hope you enjoyed being alone with me, and I’ll see you next time for the next episode of HOW TO EAT ALONE.