Having grown up in New York's Greenwich Village, Lisa Jane Persky began a career as an actress appearing at La Mama E.T.C. as The World's Most Perfect Teenager in H.M. Koutoukas's Grandmother is in The Strawberry Patch. She was an early participant in the CBGB's scene and a founding member of the staff of the New York Rocker. Since then, her work as journalist, photographer and artist has appeared in The Pitchfork Review, Maggot Brain, Mojo, Q, Uncut, The Los Angeles Times, L.A.Weekly and Fortean Times among others. She is a founding editor and art director of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her fiction has appeared in Bomb and is anthologized in Eclectica: Best Fiction Vol.1. Lisa is a recipient of Print Magazine's Award for Design Excellence for her collage work and she co-produced and curated Los Angeles Loteria; An Exploration of Identity. LAL is an edition of letterpress prints in honor of the 40th Anniversary of L.A.'s Aardvark Letterpress, helping to establish it as an industry leader in fine art printing. In between these things, she has continued a career as an actress, having appeared on, off and off-off Broadway and in numerous films and television shows. For writing and acting see: lisajanepersky.com
Lisa's Clients are
HAPPY CLIENTS:
“Lisa Jane Persky takes beautiful, beautiful, photographs. She covers a ton of ground: visit her site to look at vintage, CBGB’s era Debbie Harry, but stay for everything else.”
Matthew Specktor Author of American Dream Machine for Lost at E Minor Magazine
“I began looking around at author and musician photos, trying to find some that seemed to match a vague idea I had in my head about what I wanted for my own photo. I happened across the LA Review of Books website and scrolled through the staff photos. Some were smiling, some serious, some were closely cropped head shots, others allowed you to experience the person with their background. Amazingly, even with this wide variation, they all were successful. More over, many of them portrayed the vibe that I was hoping to achieve with my own photo - a sense of depth within the person, neither pretentious nor artificially humble, (and, quite honestly, just plain attractive). I contacted Lisa and we set up a time for my shoot on her next visit to New York.
I had some ideas about the overall aesthetic I wanted, and Lisa instantly seemed to understand what I was going for. We then jointly decided on locations for the shoot. I wisely let her take the reigns on figuring out all the specifics - composition, posture, exposure, etc. Like most people, being in front of a camera makes me highly self-conscious, especially so for a shoot like this, (this of course wasn't merely a snapshot). Lisa was cool and fun and created a totally relaxed atmosphere, which miraculously allowed her to capture me looking and acting naturally. When I saw the prints it was one of the few times I felt like photos really were me. Trying to portray in one frozen moment in time the whole complexity that makes up a person is an impossible task. Yet, as close as someone can come to achieving that, I think Lisa nailed it.”
David Zweig - Author, lecturer and musician based in Brooklyn, New York. His book: Invisibles: The Power of Anonymous Work in an Age of Relentless Self-Promotion (Penguin)
“I’ve never looked better”
Andrew V. Dill
