Like the famous Ryan McGinley, Cig Harvey is part of a new generation of photographers who speak of themselves through photography. Certainly, photographers have long taken pictures of their lives, but more rarely have they made their own person the central subject of their pictures. We should get used to looking at such series where the artist surrenders her privacy.

Harvey’s latest series, You Look At Me Like An Emergency, is today on view at the Robin Rice gallery, after having been the subject of another exhibition and an eponymous monograph. The title refers, she says, to a way her husband looks at her. It’s the story of an artist and her relationship to photography, which she uses as an escape by exploring, translating her experiences of, and paying tribute to, life, however naive it might be. “My photographs are typically concerned with fragility. I use photography to legitimize these ‘in between’ moments of struggle, uncertainty and doubt. My photographs are declarations of faith and beauty in life. They are an attempt to create order out of chaos and beauty out of pain.”

Her photographs offer a visual journey into her colorful and dreamlike world. To convey her experiences, emotions, dreams and simple thoughts, the photographer mainly uses self-portrait. In You Look At Me Like An Emergency, playing to our nostalgia, she puts on dresses and other vintage accessories. In one of her photographs, all in red and accompanied by an inflatable ball of the same color, she seems to walk across the surface of the water towards a palm tree. In another image, suffused with blue, she hangs off of a metal buoy, looking deep into the ocean, preparing perhaps to jump in.

The rest of her pictures feature people other than herself, mainly young girls—members of her family and other relatives—whom she directs as if she was taking their place. Beautiful to look at, wonderfully balanced and naturally lit, Cig Harvey’s photographs are a form of modern poetry.

Jonas Cuénin

Cig Harvey, You Look At Me Like An Emergency
From november 14 to december 30, 2012
Robin Rice Gallery
325 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10014, États-Unis

(212) 366-6660