Fall Table, Rockport, Maine, 2013.What sits at the center of Cig Harvey's Fall Table is a question of strategy as much as a yellow apple.
Sadie & the Moon, Lake Megunticook, Maine, 2013.Long before the camera, people learned to hold a bright disc against the failing light and let it stand in for a face, a god, a full moon summoned early.
North Haven, High Tide, Maine, 2018.A single pale wrist, lifted just clear of the black water, bent back behind the head: it is the smallest thing in the frame and it governs everything.
Boltonia Asteroides, Union, Maine, 2019.Where is she going, this woman in the petrol-blue coat, turning her back on us and walking into a black field that seems lit only by its flowers?
Emerald Coat with Dahlia Petal, Union, Maine, 2019.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.
Pink is a Touch, Red is a Stare, St George, Maine, 2019.Red arrives as a shout and pink as a whisper, both floating on water so darkly green it reads as black.
The Compost Heap, Camden, Maine, 2019.A river of flowers cuts through the dark of the forest, a sudden flare of color in a place that seems almost soundless.
Early Stardrift, Rockport, Maine, 2020.Early Stardrift positions itself squarely within the constructed still life that has become one of contemporary photography's most articulate genres — the tabletop tableau, lit and staged, that knows…
Poppies (Exploding), Rockport, Maine, 2020.Cig Harvey makes photographs you seem to feel before you finish seeing them.
Poppies (Sinking), Rockport, Maine, 2020.One white poppy sits just off-center, ringed by its own meniscus of light, the only bloom in the frame that has not surrendered its colour to the surrounding red.
Chive Blossoms, Rockport, Maine, 2021.That blue — a wet, voltaic, just-past-dusk blue, the kind that exists only in the ten minutes after the sun quits — is the whole event here.
Night Garden, Eagle Island, Maine, 2021.Kale, at night, filling the frame from edge to edge.
Orchids, Roses, & Oil painting (Soaking) Rockport, Maine, 2021.The weather inside this picture is flood.
Scout in the Apple Orchard, Rockport, Maine, 2021.In this luminous photograph, Scout moves through a snow-blanketed apple orchard near Rockport, Maine, her dark silhouette framed against an expanse of white.
Skyline, Rockport, Maine, 2021.We have reached a moment when the night sky, for many of us, is furnished more reliably by strings of small bulbs than by stars, and this photograph makes the substitution its subject.
The Meadow, Rockport, Maine, 2021.This is a constructed image that knows exactly which genres it is borrowing from.
Rhododendrons /Scout), Camden, 2022.Rhododendrons in flower, dense to every edge of the frame.
Gold Road, Camden, 2023.The road declines to show us where it goes.
January Swim, Rockport Harbor, 2023.A harbour at dusk, seen from a little above.
Slice of Cake, Rockport, Maine, 2023.Notice first the cake server: a plain steel triangle, its handle running off into the dark like a tool left mid-task, lifting a wedge of cake as if to offer it across the table.
The Banquet, Camden, Maine, 2023.Made in Camden, Maine, in 2023, this is a picture that knows exactly which genre it is reanimating.
The Cake That Fell from the Sky, Rockport, Maine, 2023.One colour fills the frame: a heavy golden cloth, rumpled, its seams showing, running out past every edge.
The Cherries, Rockport, Maine, 2023.Why does photography keep coming back to the table?
The Midnight Feast, Rockport, Maine, 2023.Who has just left this table? The cloth is spread the length of a banquet, white in the bruised dusk of the Maine woods, and the answer arrives not in a face but in the stain: at the near end the…
Three Apricots (Wet), 2023.Three apricots, and the seam down the side of each one — that soft cleft where the fruit was once attached to the branch, to the stone, to the idea of growing — turned toward the light as if it were…
Two-Tiered Pink Layer Cake, Camden, 2023.Spotlighting a confection in a room that has clearly been emptied for the purpose, the picture stages its small pink subject the way a vitrine stages a relic.
Hawthorn Blossoms & Camelias, Devon, England, 2024.In the 1830s, in a damp English country house, photography began as a branch of botany: William Henry Fox Talbot pressing leaves and petals onto sensitized paper, fixing the shadows of plants because…
Flowers, When We Have No Words, White Peonies, Vinalhaven, 2025.Cig Harvey's "White Peonies" emerges from shadow like a whispered confession, its crumpled petals unfurling from aged pages in luminous defiance of darkness.
Winged Kelp and RockWeed, Elizabeth, 2025.Seen from directly above: black water, and floating on it dense olive-gold clumps of kelp and rockweed, so thick across the top of the frame that the water barely shows.