Emerald Coat with Dahlia Petal, Union, Maine, 2019
Archival Pigment Print.
50.8 x 40.6 cm / 20 x 16 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm / 40 x 30 in
142.2 x 106.7 cm / 56 x 42 in
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.
A hand reaches from the folds of an emerald satin coat to cradle a fistful of magenta dahlia petals, jewel against jewel, the cool green and the hot pink vibrating at the point where they meet. Cig Harvey made this picture in Union, Maine, in 2019, and it concentrates everything that has made her one of the most distinctive color photographers working today, a sensuous, almost synaesthetic attention to the texture of being alive.
British-born and long settled on the Maine coast, Harvey builds images around the body, the garden, and the turning seasons, treating color as pure emotion and flowers as a language of desire and mortality. The satin's deep folds become a landscape, the petals a small offering, the bare wrist a moment of startling intimacy. Nothing is incidental, yet nothing feels staged, the picture poised between still life and self-portrait, between abundance and the petal's certain fading. Her photographs are often paired with her own writing, so that image and word together build a diaristic poetry of attention.
Her acclaimed books, among them You Look Beautiful and You Are Here, Blue Violet, and You an Orchestra You a Bomb, have won a devoted following, and her work has been exhibited and collected internationally, with major solo museum presentations in recent years. This archival pigment print shows Harvey at the height of her powers, an artist who can make a single handful of petals carry the full weight of joy, longing, and the fierce beauty of the present moment.
A hand reaches from the folds of an emerald satin coat to cradle a fistful of magenta dahlia petals, jewel against jewel, the cool green and the hot pink vibrating at the point where they meet. Cig Harvey made this picture in Union, Maine, in 2019, and it concentrates everything that has made her one of the most distinctive color photographers working today, a sensuous, almost synaesthetic attention to the texture of being alive.
British-born and long settled on the Maine coast, Harvey builds images around the body, the garden, and the turning seasons, treating color as pure emotion and flowers as a language of desire and mortality. The satin's deep folds become a landscape, the petals a small offering, the bare wrist a moment of startling intimacy. Nothing is incidental, yet nothing feels staged, the picture poised between still life and self-portrait, between abundance and the petal's certain fading. Her photographs are often paired with her own writing, so that image and word together build a diaristic poetry of attention.
Her acclaimed books, among them You Look Beautiful and You Are Here, Blue Violet, and You an Orchestra You a Bomb, have won a devoted following, and her work has been exhibited and collected internationally, with major solo museum presentations in recent years. This archival pigment print shows Harvey at the height of her powers, an artist who can make a single handful of petals carry the full weight of joy, longing, and the fierce beauty of the present moment.