Hand-signed by the artist, with title, date, and edition number inscribed in ink on an archival label affixed to the reverse side of the mounted photograph.
Tanager red, bunting indigo, waxwing fawn shading into lemon: the colors get top billing here, set against a black with the nap of velvet. The birds themselves come next, eight or so New England songbirds crowding one leafy branch like the season’s most reckless hat. Only then, in the single gap the plumage allows, the real subject: one green eye, wide open, giving the camera its full attention.
As portraiture it is closer to millinery, and I mean that as high praise. The waxwing wears its crest like a swept-back coif and a bandit’s eyeliner; the scarlet tanager supplies the lipstick note every good cover needs; the snow bunting, lower right, brings the tweed. Every feather holds its pose with a professional’s discipline, nothing flutters, and the arrangement climbs the frame the way a great page layout climbs, color balanced against color. The face beneath could vanish entirely and almost does. That single eye keeps the whole confection from tipping into decor: someone is in there, amused, watchful, letting the birds speak for her.
Harvey shoots in and around Rockport, Maine; her books, The Blue Notebook, You an Orchestra a Bomb, Blue Violet, run on exactly this mix, and American museums collect and exhibit her widely. This picture shows why: the sensory pitch is fashion-page high, the feeling underneath is family-album tender. The archival pigment print carries the saturation without a wobble, red staying red, blue staying electric, blacks going fathoms deep. File it under portraiture, still life, or plumage; it holds the pose either way.
Tanager red, bunting indigo, waxwing fawn shading into lemon: the colors get top billing here, set against a black with the nap of velvet. The birds themselves come next, eight or so New England songbirds crowding one leafy branch like the season’s most reckless hat. Only then, in the single gap the plumage allows, the real subject: one green eye, wide open, giving the camera its full attention.
As portraiture it is closer to millinery, and I mean that as high praise. The waxwing wears its crest like a swept-back coif and a bandit’s eyeliner; the scarlet tanager supplies the lipstick note every good cover needs; the snow bunting, lower right, brings the tweed. Every feather holds its pose with a professional’s discipline, nothing flutters, and the arrangement climbs the frame the way a great page layout climbs, color balanced against color. The face beneath could vanish entirely and almost does. That single eye keeps the whole confection from tipping into decor: someone is in there, amused, watchful, letting the birds speak for her.
Harvey shoots in and around Rockport, Maine; her books, The Blue Notebook, You an Orchestra a Bomb, Blue Violet, run on exactly this mix, and American museums collect and exhibit her widely. This picture shows why: the sensory pitch is fashion-page high, the feeling underneath is family-album tender. The archival pigment print carries the saturation without a wobble, red staying red, blue staying electric, blacks going fathoms deep. File it under portraiture, still life, or plumage; it holds the pose either way.