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Cig Harvey, Roses, Yellow Car, 2020, archival pigment print, 16" x 20," edition of 10, $3000

photo-eye Gallery is pleased to announce Blue Violet: Photographs and Text by Cig Harvey, an online solo exhibition by renowned photographer Cig Harvey. This exhibition opens online on July 3rd, and corresponds with Harvey's recent photobook Blue Violet, published by The Monacelli Press.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

In the vein of magical realism, rooted in her personal experience, Cig Harvey frames a series of allegorical narratives in Blue Violet, that elevate the ordinary to the extraordinary. The exquisite palette, the soft light and deep contrast of her imagery, the subtle drawings and poetic language, evoke dreamy yet profound emotional images that illustrate the relationship of the human condition to the natural world.

Cig Harvey, Clouds in the Lake, 2020, archival pigment print, 20" x 16," edition of 10, $3000

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

"Blue Violet is a celebration of the natural world and the senses. Blue Violet is a vibrant meditation on the procession of seasons, sensory abundance, and the magic in everyday life." — Cig Harvey

Publisher's Description

Part art book, botanical guide, historical encyclopedia, and poetry collection, Blue Violet is a compendium of beauty, color, and the senses.

Cig Harvey, Angel Trumpets, 2020, archival pigment print, 20" x 16," edition of 10, $3000

Plants, flowers, and our experience of the natural world are the threads that tie this unique book together. Exploring the five senses, Blue Violet takes the reader on a personal journey through nature and the range of human emotions.

As with her previous three titles — You Look At Me Like An Emergency, Gardening at Night, and You an Orchestra You a Bomb — this book invites the reader to pause, laugh, cry, create, and become more aware of the natural world. Images and text in a variety of forms (prose poetry, recipes, lists, research pieces, diagrams) focus on immediate experience to understand the vibrancy of the senses on memory and feelings.

Cig Harvey, Scout and the Pansies, 2020, archival pigment print, 20" x 16," edition of 10, $3000

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Cig Harvey is an artist who uses images and language to explore sensory experience and elevate the everyday. Rich in implied narrative, deeply rooted in the natural world, her work is devoted to the topic of what it is to feel.

Cig Harvey. Photo Credit: David Brommer

Her work has been reviewed and featured in The New York Times, BBC, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, Vice, The Sunday Times, The Independent, Marie Claire Italia, and New York Magazine. Cig Harvey's work is included in permanent collections of major institutions including, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine. Harvey was named one of the 2021 recipients of the Farnsworth’s Maine in America Award and was named the 2018 Prix Virginia Laureate, an international photography award based out of Paris, among many other honors. Harvey has published three previous sold out monographs the first of which: You Look At Me Like An Emergency, was accompanied by a solo museum show at the Stenersen Museum in Oslo, Norway in Spring 2012. The artist lives and works in rural Maine.

» Order Blue Violet by Cig Harvey

Blue Violet: Photographs and Text by Cig Harvey, uses photo-eye’s VisualServer X website builder.

photo-eye Gallery is proud to represent Cig Harvey. To learn more about the artist and view her work, click on the links below.

» View Other Work by Cig Harvey

» Learn More about Cig Harvey

• • • • •

All prices listed were current at the time this post was published.

For more information, and to purchase prints, please contact Gallery Director Anne Kelly or Gallery Assistant Patricia Martin, or you may also call us at 505-988-5152 x202

Cig Harvey, The Blue Hole, 2020, archival pigment print, 16" x 20," Edition of 10, $3000

This week, as a part of our photo-eye Conversations series, we're premiering a new interview with artist Cig Harvey!

Cig Harvey is a fine art photographer who keeps her eyes and ears open. Harvey’s images are excellent examples of how simple elements of color and composition in photographs can deeply effect the viewer. The sheer lushness of her botanical subject matter invites the viewer to engage, and then engage again. The artist feels an intimate and electric connection with the plants and people that she photographs, and this emotional intrigue translates into each and every image.

Cig Harvey also cultivates a regular writing practice alongside her photography. Harvey has released three major publications, You an Orchestra You a Bomb, Gardening at Night, and You Look at Me Like an Emergency prior to the release of Blue Violet, Cig Harvey’s most recent monograph, published by Monacelli Press. Blue Violet is a book that demands attention. Its size, the tactility of the stretched fabric across the cover, the bright colors that can’t help but to catch your eye from across the room — they all echo the intensity with which Cig Harvey makes her work.

As Blue Violet prepares for its second printing, which is available for pre-order now, Anne Kelly caught up with Cig to talk about the work in our accompanying online exhibition. Don’t miss this insightful conversation, available below or on Vimeo!

>> Check out more photo-eye Conversations
>> Order the second printing of Blue Violet

In the words of Cig Harvey, Blue Violet is a celebration of the natural world and the senses…[It] is a vibrant meditation on the procession of seasons, sensory abundance, and the magic in everyday life.” Our online exhibition of this work showcases images that tie the sensory world to the material one, and leaves room for the moments of passing in between.

View images from the show below, and circle back to our interview with Cig Harvey to hear more from the artist about each photograph!

Cig Harvey, All the Rhododendrons, 2020, archival pigment print, 20" x 16," Edition of 10, $3000

Cig Harvey, Rhododendrons and Ladder, 2020, archival pigment print, 20" x 16," Edition of 10, $3000

“It’s so important to let photography lead you, it will reveal so much more if you just get out of the way of yourself, and follow the light.” - Cig Harvey

Cig Harvey, Emily in the River, 2020, archival pigment print, 20" x 16," Edition of 10, $3000

>>Watch the photo-eye Conversation between Cig Harvey and Gallery Director Anne Kelly on Vimeo

>> Order the second printing of Blue Violet through the photo-eye Bookstore

>> View Blue Violet, the online exhibition, built with VisualServer X

• • • • •

All prices listed were current at the time this post was published.

For more information, and to purchase prints, please contact Gallery Director Anne Kelly or Gallery Assistant Delaney Hoffman, or you may also call us at 505-988-5152 x202

Devin and the Fireflies, 2010 – © Cig Harvey

photo-eye Gallery is excited to announce Gardening at Night, an exhibition of color images and animations by photographer Cig Harvey opening Friday April 15th and continuing through June 4th, 2016. An opening and artist reception will take place on Friday, April 15th from 5-7 PM.

Scout & The Clementines, 2015 © Cig Harvey | C-Print, 14 x 14", Ed. of 10, $2,500

photo-eye Gallery is delighted to share a selection of new color images by Cig Harvey. This collection of photographs can be found in Harvey's highly anticipated monograph titled You an Orchestra You a Bomb from Schilt Publishing, scheduled to release at the end of 2017. The third installment from Harvey, these works are magical as ever, but with perhaps a slightly darker undertone. Each moment feels precious and fleeting, both like the past and the unforeseen future. The rich images evoke a certain sound or rather a current, passing through you as you view them. A splash of water, a crackling sparkler, the howling blizzard and booming bonfire are just a few of the sounds in Harvey's stage, or in this case Orchestra.

You an Orchestra You a Bomb looks at my relationship with life itself. It is work about the future, about paying attention to the fragile present. It makes icons of the everyday and looks at life on the threshold between magic and disaster.

- Cig Harvey

Scout in the Blizzard, 2017 © Cig Harvey | C-Print, 14 x 14", Ed. of 10, $2,500

Lake Megunticook, 2016 © Cig Harvey | C-Print, 14 x 14", Ed. of 10, $2,500

Sparks, 2016 © Cig Harvey | C-Print, 14 x 14", Ed. of 10, $2,500

The Fire, 2015 © Cig Harvey | C-Print, 14 x 14", Ed. of 10, $2,500

Cig Harvey's photographs are Chromogenic Prints, or can be made to order as a Dye Sublimation Print on Aluminum in the following sizes:

14 x 14 inches, edition of 10, starting at $2,500

28 x 28 inches, edition of 7, starting at $4,500

40 x 40 inches, edition of 5, starting at $8,000

For more information on prints, or to pre-order your signed copy of You an Orchestra, You a Bomb please contact the Gallery Staff at: 505-988-5152 x 202 or gallery@photoeye.com

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View You an Orchestra You a Bomb

See Harvey's Handmade Artist Books

Read Savannah Sakry's Interview with Cig

Pre-Order Monograph

Portrait of Cig Harvey © Stefan Wachs

Cig Harvey is best known for her wonderfully colorful images and the personal stories that accompany them. She is an expert of the visual narrative, and her works explore the universal themes of love and family, and building a home once you’ve found it. Through her spectacular use of color and light, her world feels supernatural. Harvey's narratives act as a dose of optimism and evoke a special familiarity among viewers. Her first two monographs, You Look at Me Like an Emergency and Gardening at Night received top reviews for her imaginative photographs paired with her strikingly honest personally written vignettes. Harvey has also self-published two stunning limited edition artist books titled Running Towards Us and The Hope Chest. Each one feature gorgeous C-prints, printed by the artist and include Cig's delightful vignettes.

"Artist books are such a labor of love, and that work and attention to detail is one of the many reasons I love them. To make an exquisite hand crafted rare object where every element has been considered is, to me, an amazing way to spend a life." – Cig Harvey

Running Towards Us from Cig Harvey on Vimeo.

Running Towards Us

Format: A hand-bound by Cig, accordion-style book that can be displayed in one long line or as a traditional book form.

Size: 13 x 11-3/8 inches. 24 pages including colophon and title page.

Photographs: 16 original 10” x 10” C-prints, printed on Kodak Endura Luster paper to archival standards and mounted using acid free archival adhesive. Book features some images that are sold out in all editions.

Text: 6 vignettes written by Cig Harvey and designed by artist Deb Wood. Printed letterpress with archival inks by Fox Island Press, North Haven, Maine.

Cover: Wrap-around cover featuring hand-cut paper title by artist Hannah Berta and original silk screen print by Claire Donelly of Fox Island Press, North Haven, Maine.

Paper: The book is available in one of two beautiful heavy-weight paper options: Stonehenge Pearl Grey or Rives BFK White.

Box: The book is housed in a custom-made cloth clamshell box by artist Richard Smith, Camden, Maine.

Price: Editions 1-10 $6,000. Editions 11-14 $10,000. 2APs TBD

The Hope Chest

An untraditional love story told in twelve parts. Each section has a written vignette and either a single, diptych or triptych photograph. All 24 photographs are 8"x 8" archival C-prints on Kodak Endura Luster paper and mounted on to Stonehenge White. Covers and pockets are made from Stonehenge Pearl gray paper and ink jet vellum. Book design and assembly by Cig Harvey and Claire Donnelly. Wrap-around cover is printed letterpress in gold by Wolfe Editions. Custom-made clamshell constructed by Caitlyn Thompson in the softest leather with gold leaf titling.

The Hope Chest is in the permanent collections of The Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine, Special Collections at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine and The University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.

The Hope Chest is made in an edition of 15 with 2 artist proofs. All books are numbered and signed.
Current Price is $5,500

Sisters, Owl's Head, Maine, 2014 © Cig Harvey | C- print, 14 x 14", Ed. of 10, $2,500

Wolfhound, Hope, Maine, 2012 © Cig Harvey | C- print, 14 x 14", Ed. of 10, $2,500

"Cig Harvey reveals the mysticism in the mundane. Her photos, taken over the course of four years, explore the passage of time and show that home is wherever you look for it."

— VOGUE Magazine

View the Gardening at Night Portfolio

Read the Gardening at Night Book Review

Read Savannah Sakry's Interview with Cig

For more information on the Limited Edition Artist Books, or to purchase prints, please contact the Gallery Staff at 505-988-5152 x 202 or gallery@photoeye.com.

We are excited to introduce a new selection of images from longtime Photographer's Showcase artist Cig Harvey.

White Witch Moth -- Cig Harvey

This new collection of images is made up of photographs featured in her first book from Schilt Publishing, You Look At Me Like An Emergency that topped photo-eye's bestseller's list twice and has been on the list for a total of six weeks. The Photographer's Showcase portfolio collects images from nearly 10 years of Harvey's photographic career, spanning her well-known self-portraits and recent work photographed in and around her home in Maine. Whether photographing herself or another, Harvey's vibrant and visually stunning images connect to a world that isn't foreign enough to feel unreal, but is different enough from the every day to feel slightly magical.

Devin and The Fireflies, 2010 and The Cherries, 2007 -- Cig Harvey

"I’ve always been drawn to personal work in art, music and literature as a device to tap into the universal. My work reflects, either indirectly or directly, what I am concerned with at that time but it’s always the human spirit that fascinates me. I initially used myself as the subject when I was creating work about the past, but the pictures were never really specifically about me, rather the universal emotion I was trying to explore. A shift happened in 2005 when I started to make work about the present. I no longer needed to be in the images, I just needed to have my camera in hand and look at the world around me. I gravitate towards magical realism in photography. Trying to seek out an image that causes a visual jolt, it’s a form of escapism and creates a balance or edited mirror on reality. I search for locations, light, and weather that will isolate and provide a stage for the gaze or gesture of the subject. I’ve always been interested by what is timeless in a portrait. I photograph the people I am surrounded by, so that I can recognize the moment when I don’t know them; in that frame, our relationship is somehow compromised and the familiar becomes foreign." -- Cig Harvey from the photo-eye Blog interview on You Look At Me Like An Emergency

The Hope Chest, 2007 and Doug and Harriet, 2010 -- Cig Harvey

Capturing that moment between the familiar and the foreign is what allows Harvey's images to coexist as universal and personal. Even the photographs in which she appears are never entirely self-portraits -- her form is there to fill a role, but the identity of her character is unimportant. Harvey's photographs extend further outward, the introspective and emotive scenes seem quietly allegorical, and ultimately, relatable. In book form, the work becomes more personal:

"Through words and pictures Harvey has recorded an imaginative epic of unknowing, discovery, and deepening; she reveals herself, in all her complications and anecdotal delight, as a person coming to grips with that significant other who does, now and then, regard her as amiably odd, perhaps even needful of loving care. Readers of the book may feel the same way." -- George Slade from his review of You Look At Me Like An Emergency

View Harvey's work on the Photographer's Showcase

Purchase a signed copy of Harvey's book You Look At Me Like An Emergency

Read the photo-eye Blog interview with Cig Harvey

Read George Slade's review of You Look At Me Like An Emergency

For more information on Cig Harvey's work, please contact Anne Kelly at photo-eye Gallery by email or by calling the gallery at (505) 988-5152 x202

Gardening at Night. By Cig Harvey.
Schilt Publishing, 2015.

Gardening at Night
Reviewed by Melanie McWhorter

Gardening at Night
Photographs by Cig Harvey
Schilt Publishing, 2015. 144 pp., 6x8¼x¾".

Some years ago I saw Nan Goldin speak to an audience of over 200 Italians in Rome. Near the beginning of the talk, she questioned the mostly non-native English speakers, “Do you believe photography is truth?” Not receiving much of a reply from the attentive, but bewildered watchers, she asked again, “Really… everyone believes that photography is truth?” Still no answer. The lack of response was likely because of Goldin’s intimidating approach, the lack appropriate venue for debate or the mere language issue, but her challenge to the notion of photography as truth or, at the least, as an accurate representation of the moment contained within the frame has remained with me in my exploration of photography. Many theorists and academics have debated the photograph’s place as a factual document, and this lowly book review will not venture into the disputes about whether there is truth in photography, but I will recognize and admire its capacity to tell the story of one person’s life through a series of real and staged images. Cig Harvey has an uncanny ability to use photographs to create a sincere, romantic and down-to-earth visual autobiography. Her first monograph You Look at Me Like an Emergency and her more recent photobook Gardening at Night share her story and her truth.

Cig Harvey's Gardening at Night photo-eye Gallery

We were delighted to host photographer Cig Harvey at the opening reception of her exhibition Gardening at Night, currently running through June 4th at photo-eye Gallery. After meeting the artist behind the marvelously colorful and spellbinding images, we were captivated, not only by Harvey's fabulous style and charming personality but by her unwavering devotion to storytelling and photograph-making. Harvey believes photography is the “most powerful medium in the world,” a belief that is evident in the remarkable fascination her pictures evoke.

Also central to Harvey's practice is the personal journey of making her photographs, which she beautifully discussed in a lecture for the School of Visual Arts. “Writing, journaling, mind mapping, …to make visual what's inside of us,” are all steps of her process and teaching methods, with the goal of "making pictures about things rather than of things." photo-eye’s Savannah Sakry asked Harvey to expand on a few points she made in the lecture, and for more insight into the photographs currently on view in the Gardening at Night exhibition at photo-eye Gallery.

Day for Night. By Richard Learoyd.
Aperture/Pier 24 Photography, 2015.

This week's Book of the Week pick comes from Cig Harvey who has selected Day for Night by Richard Learoyd from Aperture/Pier 24 Photography.

You Look At Me Like An Emergency by Cig Harvey

photo-eye has been proud to exhibit Cig Harvey's work on the Photographer's Showcase for many years. In Harvey's most famous images, a lone woman fills the frame. Wearing a beautiful dress, the woman's face is often obscured, her form is juxtaposed with the objects or scene around her -- she stands on a buoy in the open ocean or poses with a halved green apple cinched in her belt. Harvey established her career with these evocative self-portraits but turned her camera to other models several years ago. Still, her work maintains its intimate storybook-like feel, as if existing in a realm of subtle magic between the personal and universal.

Considering the quantity of Harvey's photographic output, it would have been easy to make her first book a straightforward retrospective, but instead she has created a publication that exists as an independent work of art along side her photographic prints. You Look at me Like an Emergency from Schilt Publishing is an unusual photobook that combines ten years of her work with handwritten text from journal entries, forming a loose narrative about loss and love. It is personal and affecting, telling a memorable story in a unique way. Harvey was kind enough to discuss her work and the book with us, including how the narrative came together and the bold merging of text with her images.

from You Look At Me Like An Emergency by Cig Harvey

photo-eye: Your images seem to be perched on the line between magical and poetic universality and deeply personal symbolic language. Can you discuss the push and pull between the personal and universal, using yourself as a subject and moving into using others as models?

Cig Harvey: I’ve always been drawn to personal work in art, music and literature as a device to tap into the universal. My work reflects, either indirectly or directly, what I am concerned with at that time but it’s always the human spirit that fascinates me. I initially used myself as the subject when I was creating work about the past, but the pictures were never really specifically about me, rather the universal emotion I was trying to explore. A shift happened in 2005 when I started to make work about the present. I no longer needed to be in the images, I just needed to have my camera in hand and look at the world around me. I gravitate towards magical realism in photography. Trying to seek out an image that causes a visual jolt, it’s a form of escapism and creates a balance or edited mirror on reality. I search for locations, light, and weather that will isolate and provide a stage for the gaze or gesture of the subject. I’ve always been interested by what is timeless in a portrait. I photograph the people I am surrounded by, so that I can recognize the moment when I don’t know them; in that frame, our relationship is somehow compromised and the familiar becomes foreign.

from You Look At Me Like An Emergency by Cig Harvey

PE: The book is a really interesting project, weaving together 10 years of your photographic work to create something altogether new -- a visual storybook of sorts. How did the concept of the book come about? What was the process of editing the images for the book like? Have you always considered your photography to be part of a lose narrative or was this a new way to contextualize your work?

CH: As a self-professed literature junkie I do love a book with a true story line; a start, middle and end. This book, like all books it seems, was a true labor of love, taking over four years to structure. The process was simultaneously exhilarating and grueling as it went through many versions to become the book that finally got printed. I did at one time create an edit that highlighted only the later work but it felt like I was doing a disservice to the creative process itself. Like most artists, you think you are making your best work currently, but where would we be without early albums and first novels? It’s no different in the visual arts. For me, there’s an important innocence and rawness in some of the earlier self-portrait work that sets a stage for the later portrait and environmental work. One grew from another and the whole concept of the book of Emergency is about growth and change. So, in a sense the narrative storyline made itself by trying to stay true to a pivotal ten years of discovery. Emergency documents a path towards finding a sense of self worth and home – an archetypal quest in its most basic definition.

from You Look At Me Like An Emergency by Cig Harvey

PE: The pretty, idiosyncratic handwriting in the book is almost itself a character within the story, coming and going, sometimes giving context, sometimes setting a tone, firmly placing the narrative in personal context. I'm curious about how you feel the text affects the images and changes the reader's relationship to your work. Why did you choose to add text and what do you feel are the advantages or detractions of using it?

CH: The text is an extremely important element of Emergency. It brings another dimension, which in combination with the images, hopefully adds up to more than the sum of its parts. In an early version, the book was laid out with regular Helvetica font but it just didn’t work. It felt too formal. The content of the written work was often so direct and specific that a conventional presentation of the text seemed disconnected from the photographs. I am always exploring a question, an idea or a concern, but my imagery can become shrouded by the formal elements of beauty: light, form, and color. The text adds a certain gravitas, which often times is much truer to the reality. I worked with an incredible designer, Deb Wood, and she managed to bring together both elements together in a harmonious way.

from You Look At Me Like An Emergency by Cig Harvey

PE: What are you working on next? Are there any more book projects in the near future?

CH: So I‘m hard at work on my next project, Gardening At Night, which hopefully will be a book some day, I guess it will be ready in 10 years if Emergency is anything to go by. It’s a metaphorical exploration into the wonder and fear I’ve experienced by becoming a new parent and putting down roots in the delicious state of Maine. It’s interesting how, now that I am more grounded, my images are darker than ever. I guess it comes back to the balance/mirror thing. Photography is amazing. I have been utterly in love with it since the age of 13, and yet somehow this medium is always new to me. I’m incredibly grateful that this is how I spend my days.

Pre-order a signed copy of You Look At Me Like An Emergency

Read George Slade's review of the book here
Cig Harvey's portfolios on the Photographer's Showcase can be found here

You Look At Me Like an Emergency. Photographs by Cig Harvey.
Published by Schilt Publishing, 2012.

You Look At Me Like an Emergency

Reviewed by George Slade

You Look at Me Like an Emergency
Photographs by Cig Harvey
Schilt Publishing, 2012. Hardbound. 144 pp., 74 color illustrations, 8-3/4x8-3/4".

Upon first learning that Cig Harvey's wondrously whimsical photographs were being published I was skeptical. Not all photography needs to be seen in book form, and I was less than clear about how Harvey's images would fare on paper. They look great individually, and great framed and hung on walls. One by one they are enigmatic artifacts of an anomalous, nomadic imagination. Would this seemingly disconnected set of parenthetical tableaux translate effectively to book form? My guess was no. And my guess was wrong.

The narrative constitutes three numbered sections. The imagery is often simplified, with a protagonist seen in various unusual, though not life-threatening, situations. One advantage to the book form is that through accumulation we discover that Harvey herself, who is frequently her own model (though she mutes her identity through modes of disguise and self-effacing/-erasing distance), is not pursuing a Sherman-esque set of revelations or character critiques. The roles enacted throughout Emergency are quotidian meditations, common and remarkably graceful in their introspection—a modest turn on Bruce Charlesworth's scene-setting self-portraits.

You Look at Me Like an Emergency, by Cig Harvey. Published by Schilt Publishing, 2012.

Harvey's own appearances are supplemented by numerous other actors. Instead of memoir, the sequence assumes the atmosphere of fable; the pictured figure (usually lone, usually female, often over-dressed for the circumstances, and of various ages) gives viewers surrogate agency in moments of serendipity, encouraging us to project ourselves into this Magritte-inflected landscape.

You Look at Me Like an Emergency, by Cig Harvey. Published by Schilt Publishing, 2012.

Two elements tie the fragments together, enrich the whole, and bring meaning to the book form. One is a series of comments, about self and relationships, that might be either thought balloons from the photographs, travelogue commentary, or steam-of-consciousness reverie that functions parallel to the photographs and draws us along in search of the through-line. The other crucial element lies in the dedication—"For Doug/A Love Story"—which propels this book as a tale of longing and connection.

You Look at Me Like an Emergency, by Cig Harvey. Published by Schilt Publishing, 2012.

Through words and pictures Harvey has recorded an imaginative epic of unknowing, discovery, and deepening; she reveals herself, in all her complications and anecdotal delight, as a person coming to grips with that significant other who does, now and then, regard her as amiably odd, perhaps even needful of loving care. Readers of the book may feel the same way.—GEORGE SLADE

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GEORGE SLADE, a longtime contributor to photo-eye, is a photography writer, curator, historian and consultant based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He can be found on-line at http://rephotographica-slade.blogspot.com/

Emerald Drifters by Cig Harvey

Emerald Drifters
Photographs by Cig Harvey
Monacelli Press, New York, NY, 2025. 224 pp., 100 illustrations.

In the last few hundred years, science has worked hard to convince us that everything is knowable. We have grown accustomed to understanding the world through the lens of this distorted truth. Cig Harvey, in her fifth monograph, Emerald Drifters, invites us to return to the wonder of being.

Across its 224 pages, Emerald Drifters uses color as a container for life—a catalogue of pleasures and heartbreaks—where we encounter the divine in shades and tones of yellow, red, and blue. Its 101 photographs include the open-mouthed face of a porcelain cupid, the “woozy caverns and erect peaks” of a chocolate cake, and an abundant smoky tableau inspired by eighteenth century Flemish still lifes. These images stand side by side with watercolor diagrams, ‘how-to’ instructionals, and vignettes of creative non-fiction from The Sky Is Blue Only for You to How to Welcome the Unwanted.

In The Sublime and the Beautiful, Harvey writes, “In 1797, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant made two columns in his notepad, dividing aesthetics into the sublime and the beautiful. The sublime was to be revered as majestic, important, multiple, and monumental. The beautiful became the decorative, insignificant, singular, and superficial.” The Scientific Revolution, Kant, Newton, and many others have guided us towards a rejection of beauty. In the contemporary art world, few dare to defend the objective role beauty plays in the human experience and our connection to something greater than self. In Emerald Drifters, Harvey makes a case for its intrinsic value, arguing that beauty is an ontological primitive, a fundamental, irreducible entity—a foundational building block of reality.

Beware. Alongside beauty exists both the awe and the agony of life. A monograph allows photographs to be contextualised beyond the single frame, and when sequenced together, the images speak to one another. In his memoir, Sculpting In Time, filmmaker Andrei Tarvoksky reflects, “The aim of art is to prepare a person for death. When a link is established between the work and its beholder, the latter experiences a sublime, purging trauma. The best sides of our souls are made known. The unfathomable depths of our own potential, and the furthest reaches of our emotions.”

In Emerald Drifters, there are three sequences that explicitly establish this link for me, as described by Tarkovsky: 

A Red That Bites, a masterclass in associative thinking: red berries, red room, white flowers, open drawer, open mouth white teeth, white napkin dabbed red, dark sky, white window square.

Emerald Drifters, the namesake vignette: a garden at night and a figure (perhaps that of Rebecca Middleton, whose story is shared) both stand amongst and are another iris. We turn the page, the iris becomes small blue flowers, and again, these flowers become a path of light.

From the Emerald Drifters vignette Emerald Drifters

A Sea in Ease, it is here that I discover what the ancient pagans described as a thin place––the shortest distance between Heaven and Earth where we encounter the divine. Harvey writes about the passing of her dog Scarlett. “People send me pictures and videos of [her]. The messages say she will always be with me in spirit, but I don’t want her fucking spirit. I want her warm body pressed against me in my sleep, the smell between her paws. The body is not nothing. The body is everything.”

From the Emerald Drifter vignette A Sea in Ease

Each time I revisit these pages, I am struck. Scarlett’s golden body draped in gold fabric, bright amongst the dark foliage of the garden. I think of Doug (Harvey’s husband) running to retrieve this sheet from their bed––an echo of an earlier vignette, Last Night, I Slept in the Goldenrod. Scarlett rests in a circle of nasturtiums, the colors of life—red, orange, yellow—hold her like a pagan burial. We turn the pages: a halo of yellow mustard weed rising from the darkness, stardust falling in the night sky, a field of birds taking flight. In this work, I am the beholder, bearing witness to her soul as it is carried away. “When dying, beauty is the only language worth speaking.”

From the Emerald Drifter vignette Last Night, I Slept in the Goldenrod

It is in times of crisis where we need most to reclaim our sense of awe. Cig Harvey’s Emerald Drifters reminds us of our humanity. Its pages guide us towards the unknowable truths of goodness, beauty, and the divine. This book is an urgent call to live. Its pages burst at the seams. They “hiss, spit, and flash” rich hues of pleasure, sex, and death. The message is clear: between our first breath in and our last breath out is the everyday of living. Don’t miss out. “Be here now.”

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Madeleine Morlet is an award-winning photographer and writer based in London. She teaches photography at Maine Media Workshops, Penumbra Foundation, and the SE Center for Photography, specializing in the photobook and the narrative potential of photography. Her work as a photo book editor includes Emerald Drifters by Cig Harvey.

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>> Check out more photo-eye Conversations>> Order the second printing of Blue Violet

“It’s so important to let photography lead you, it will reveal so much more if you just get out of the way of yourself, and follow the light.” - Cig Harvey

>>Watch the photo-eye Conversation between Cig Harvey and Gallery Director Anne Kelly on Vimeo>> Order the second printing of Blue Violet through the photo-eye Bookstore>> View Blue Violet, the online exhibition, built with VisualServer X

>> Check out more photo-eye Conversations
>> Order the second printing of Blue Violet

>>Watch the photo-eye Conversation between Cig Harvey and Gallery Director Anne Kelly on Vimeo

>> Order the second printing of Blue Violet through the photo-eye Bookstore

>> View Blue Violet, the online exhibition, built with VisualServer X