It wasn’t the arts education that Libba Gillum Miller ’85 received at Maryville College that most helped her get a profitable and rewarding career in photography off the ground. It was the liberal arts education.
“Getting started in my own business was a bit intimidating at first, but I think my liberal arts education from Maryville helped me to adapt and be open to discover what needed to happen to be successful.”
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In 1990, Libba earned a certificate of photography from Nashville Tech and soon thereafter, headed out for Maine and the Maine Photographic Workshops, where she added to her photography skills as a work-study student.
“While in Maine, I was in contact with many well-known photographers and began to focus mostly on people and black and white photography as an art form,” Libba said. “After I returned from Maine, I decided to work only in photography and began taking photo jobs as I could get them and working as a photo assistant in the Nashville area.”
For several years, she worked as the staff photographer for Bone, a local music magazine in Nashville.
After hours behind the lens, Libba made sure to get in the frame with Loretta Lynn...
“This fed into my love of music,” Libba explained. “I photographed many rock and alternative music bands. In turn, this got me into doing more work in the music field, shooting publicity photos for up-and-coming bands, as well as doing album cover work. I began shooting regularly for Country Weekly and several other publications.”
Her subjects have included country and bluegrass legends Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, George Jones and Bill Monroe, as well as more contemporary artists like The Wallflowers and Patty Griffin.
...and Willie Nelson
Libba’s commercial work is visible in regional and national billboards and print campaigns. Images taken from her international travels have been exhibited in galleries throughout the South. In October 2005, a collection of her work will go on exhibit in the College’s Fine Arts Center.
Sources of inspiration
As enjoyable and exciting as her work with the famous has been, it is when she turns her lens on everyday people and beautiful places that Libba feels most fulfilled as an artist.
Her body of work includes a river baptism, elder Lakota women and the petroglyphs of Utah.
“The highlight of my career as a freelance photographer has been indirectly the amount of travel that I have been able to incorporate into my life,” she said. “My passion for photographing people and places has taken me all over the world several times.”
