Having commenced her career in Milan as a photographers’ assistant in Milan in 1990, Australian-born photographer, author, and director Robyn Lea has worked internationally for almost three decades. Her work has been published in Vogue (USA, France and Spain), The New York Times, Marie Claire (Italy), Architectural Digest (USA and Germany), T Magazine, Vogue Living, Elle Décor (UK) and Gourmet Traveller, amongst others. Since the success of her critically acclaimed early titles, Lea has gone on to author and photograph BOHEMIAN LIVING: Creative Homes Around the World (Thames & Hudson, 2018) and LISA PERRY STYLE: Fashion, Homes, Design (Assouline, 2019).

As testament to her global standing, Lea was chosen as the official photographer to shoot ETERNALLY RITZ in 2018, one of her personal favourite projects. The Ritz Paris had not released a coffee table book since 1978. Her latest title, A ROOM OF HER OWN: Inside the Homes and Lives of Creative Women (Thames & Hudson, 2021), features twenty artists and creators around the world and is insanely beautiful.

Another of my great loves is exhibition work, as it allows me to explore a subject in great depth. I’ve had the privilege of exhibiting my work around the world including at the Vittoriano Museum in Rome, the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the Australian Consulate in New York and in a solo show for the 2015 World Expo Vernissage in Milan. I’ve also photographed: French Ties; French House Chic; Venetian Chic; Chateaux Life; Mirka and Georges; and Hong Kong. A selection of my images are also included in Aerin Lauder’s book Palm Beach and Hamptons Private. Each assignment represents not just work for me, but another adventure.
Having lived in Milan for a total of three years, Zimbabwe for one, and New York for five, I relocated back to Melbourne with my family in 2016. I live with my husband Tim, our two children Issy and Freddie and our beaglier puppy, Maggie.

Such an impressive career! please tell us about your greatest inspirations?

My work takes me into the worlds of creative people around the globe, and I learn something from each experience. The twenty artists and designers that I interviewed and photographed for my new book 'A Room of Her Own', for example, have inspired me in many ways. JJ Martin in Milan (whose apartment features on the book cover), combines prolific creativity with strong personal values and an inspiring philosophy. Her approach reminds me to trust my intuition, live-life-large, and be unafraid of the gloomiest depths of self-exploration.

After spending time with Fiona Corsini in her rambling farmhouse on the outskirts of Florence, I was inspired to do more painting. Her home is awash with the same muted tones that feature in her artworks, and her love of nature is infused in everything she does. The interiors of design curator Alice Stori Liechtenstein’s castle in Austria feature a mix of ancient with contemporary designs, offering an ‘anything goes’ aesthetic that reminded me to fill our home with things that fuel the imagination and feed an endless loop of positive feelings.

Outside this book there are many other inspiring artists' homes that have photographed such as Barnaba Fornasetti’s home in Milan, Joshua and Jo Yeldham’s place in Sydney, Georgia O’Keeffe's home in New Mexico and Francesco and Alba Clemente’s home in New York.

The people who have most influenced me though are artist John Benn, and his late wife, the little-known but extraordinarily gifted writer and performer, Sara Benn. I spent time in their home growing up and I secretly dreamed of living with them - unofficially adopting them as my mentors from an early age. John painted murals on their home’s interior walls, including in the sitting room, which they called the Venetian room. He also screen-printed patterns on the wooden floorboards that lined the hall. Hovering in every room was the scent of drying rose petals, John’s Cuban cigars and Sara’s extraordinary cooking (often featuring Russian imperial recipes or dishes she learned at the Escoffier cooking school at the Ritz Paris). Every surface was covered in fabrics that Sara collected from her frequent trips abroad, and she kept her Liberty print offcuts for me and my sisters to make things at home. When Sara died about three years ago, my sister Jules and I draped her coffin in some of the magnificent, patterned fabrics and scarves that she acquired over her lifetime so her spirit could float to heaven enveloped in the same magic that she bought to our lives. I still miss her everyday.

Tell us a bit about your creative process?

My first book 'MILAN: Finding Food, Fashion & Family in a Private City' wasn’t easy to produce, as our daughter Issy was three and Freddie was just a baby, and I was still muddling through my roles as mother, wife and working woman. But I knew then, as I know now, that without a creative project, I quickly become miserable. I wanted to create an homage to the magical hidden heart of the city that I grew to love over many years. So I struggled and juggled the work, travel and other projects with parenting and little sleep. It was an emotional moment birthing that book-baby in 2012, after an incubation period of almost five years. The Bulgari Hotel in Milan launched the book in their garden on a perfect summer’s evening. That night I reflected on the hardship of my first year in Milan as a photographers’ assistant in 1990, and I felt that in some ways I was no longer an outsider, but a commentator working inside the heart of the city.

The Pollock book was much quicker. After being offered the contract with Assouline, I delivered the project - text, recipes and photos included - about a year later. To create the O’Keeffe book I retraced the artist’s steps through the arid high desert plains of New Mexico, known as ‘O’Keeffe Country’. I also spent hours at the O’Keeffe Research Center in Santa Fe, leafing through O’Keeffe’s annotated books and folders of her recipes and magazine cuttings. Then back at home in Melbourne I hosted dinner parties using O’Keeffe’s favourite recipes, testing them on my husband and our friends.

For Eternally Ritz Paris, Lisa Perry, Chateau Life, Venetian Chic, Hong Kong and French House Chic, the process was relatively straight-forward, as I did the photography but not the writing. Typically for these projects I dive in for about two weeks and emerge with thousands of files to edit before sending them to the publisher. Occasionally though, for logistical reasons, I only have a few days to shoot, such as with Mirka & Georges: A Culinary Affair. Despite the fierce pace of many of these projects, I don’t feel depleted afterwards, because they are creatively nourishing and they feed the spirit and soul.

How has the pandemic affected your creativity and how do you see the world changing?

Like many women, the pandemic has affected my work in ways large and small. Naturally international travel ceased which affected many of my research and shoot schedules. I was not able to go to Italy to shoot the book cover for ‘A Room of Her Own’, for example, (it was to feature fashion designer JJ Martin’s apartment), so had to shoot it on Zoom in Melbourne with a tech assistant in Milan. I also had to finish writing the book with the kids home schooling and my husband working from home, with a new puppy so it was pretty much impossible to concentrate!

I hope though that beyond the widespread suffering and misery wrought by the pandemic we will also see some positive changes in the world. In the introduction of 'A Room of Her Own’, I float the idea that we might, in fact, be entering a period of new Renaissance. Now, more than 500 years after the original Renaissance, the work of women creators, thinkers, makers and innovators is being showcased on new platforms to the benefit of all. In the 21st-century we are witnessing a much-needed democratisation of the worlds of art, fashion, film, music and design.

This new era has amplified the voices not only of women of exceptional talent and artistry like those in my book and featured on your website, but of billions of women whose previously invisible professional and domestic lives are being shared in the public sphere for the first time in history. The blurring of boundaries between private and public, immediate family and global online communities, art and life, is once again setting the stage for change, but this time the views and work of women can no longer be easily sidelined or ignored. The immediacy of the connection between creator and collector, philosopher and follower, mentor and student, designer and buyer, makes it possible for more women to sidestep the patriarchal structures of the past. Instead, they can now establish their own global platforms and find buyers and supporters for their work.

Who do you consider to be an icon of our time?

Amanda Gorman encapsulates so much of the best of the world today. Her fierce honesty, extraordinary creativity, grace, humour, strength and determination, are the qualities we need to see more of in our leaders around the world.

What does wellbeing mean to you, and what do you practice?

As much as I would love to say I practiced yoga ever morning and treated my body as a temple, sadly I cannot. Creative work is the thing that really fills my cup, and without it I am doomed to misery. So for me wellbeing first starts with mental health, which is fed by my work. From there I enjoy all other aspects of my life - my family, friends and community activities.