Tibby Lerner, Exploring New Worlds in iPhone Photography

Tibby Lerner’s art photography is currently on display at Umpqua Bank, at 1395 East 2nd Street in Benicia, as part of a joint exhibition with fellow Benicia photographer Robert Schwiebert. The exhibition runs through May 1 and can be viewed during bank hours, 9am to 5pm, weekdays. All of Lerner’s works were created using an iPhone. “I’ve been doing photography literally my whole life,” explains the Benicia artist. “When I was a little kid, I had a Brownie camera. My father was into photography, and he had a darkroom in the garage. After the Brownie came the point and shoot, then an SLR, and I went digital in 2009. I was the kid that collected postcards and stamps. I used my photographs to make greeting cards. That’s how I got started.”

Lerner grew up in Park Forest, a suburb of Chicago. She attended the University of Chicago, studying sociology and art, but left to join the women’s movement and get involved with groups actively protesting the Vietnam War. She joined the Chicago Women’s Graphics Collective which created posters about women’s issues; she learned to do silk-screening there.

Tibby Lerner Exhibition thru May 1, 2025, at Umpqua Bank

About the Artist

She moved to Oakland with a group of friends in 1974, gradually moving north to Berkeley, Albany, Richmond, Crockett, and eventually Benicia. “I worked for an all-woman-run painting, construction, and decorating company when I first moved to California. In the early 1970s, women in construction were pretty rare.” She was able to use her construction experience to get a steady job in retail with Kaufmann’s Fabric Land in Berkeley in 1980. Later, she worked for big box stores like Toys R Us, Joann Fabrics, Mervyns, and Sears, holding managerial or assistant managerial positions. “The career choices I had growing up – secretary, nurse, or teacher – were way too limiting. I’m glad that women today can choose any career they want.”

Lerner joined the American Canyon Arts Foundation in 2010, after moving to Crockett, and started printing, framing and showing her photographs. Her first show was at the Mare Island Skyway Festival in 2010. She moved to Benicia in 2016 and was invited to join HQ Gallery the next year. She was a member for eight years.

Lerner is self-taught and admits that it frees her of any pressure to do things a certain way.

Her photography is one way for her to bring more beauty into this world, a central purpose to her life. “For a long time, I was doing what I’d call just straight photography — nature, flowers, and landscapes. During the pandemic, however, I took a class on Zoom from Beth Grimm on iPhone photography, which changed my work. I began to explore using my phone as a camera and began using photo editing software.” She was influenced by fellow HQ Gallery member Vicki Dennis, who created mixed media collages. “I admired the look of her work, and I wanted to make my photos into collages, and to create photographs that look like they might have been created using other mediums, like watercolor.”

Lerner began to create photographs with layers of different images or image fragments, continuing a process she had used with traditional camera images. “The iPhone has opened up a whole new world of being able to combine photos. I take photos of subjects that would make good elements for a collage, things that have interesting textures for a background, or something with a pattern.”

Thoughts in Time, one of Lerner’s works in the Bank exhibition, was inspired by case studies in past life regression.

“I was thinking about being different genders in different lifetimes and about how those experiences would influence our current outlook. The work captures different points in time in the same image: an image of my nephew seeing himself as his father someday, and my nephew’s mother-in-law, who still feels that the little girl she used to be is still a part of her.” Additional layers include a background of sky and cloud, archways from a building in the Arsenal, a clock, and vines, which point to the creeping passage of time. “It’s one of the most complex images I’ve ever done, with eight photos in it. It took hours to put it together.”

“I feel that opportunities are coming to me,” says Lerner, about leaving HQ Gallery, rebranded as First Street Arts in 2025. “I loved it, but I just felt I needed more time to create my art.” In addition to her art practice, Tibby enjoys keeping up with siblings, nephews, and grandnieces in both northern and southern California. “I get pictures everyday of those young kids growing up.” She is also a plant person, and her home in Rancho Benicia boasts at least 50 indoor plants.