Raised in an 11th century house in Devon, England, Cig Harvey found a job at a local photography studio—“making tea and tidying up”—by the time she was just 12-years-old. Her passion for the art of photography hasn’t wavered since.
By 17, Harvey was traveling to places like Bolivia and Peru to makepictures that documented the hardships of silver mine workers. For atime she thought her future was photojournalism. “When I was younger Ireally had no interest in being an artist…I wanted to change theworld,” she laughs. However, Harvey soon discovered that documentarywork didn’t jibe with her sensibilities—she grew so attached to her“subjects,” and felt such an obligation to how their images wereportrayed, that it made the work too emotionally exhausting.
“So,” she says, “I decided that I would just tell my story.”
And tell she has. For the past decade, Harvey has unabashedly chronicled her life’s journey with self-portraits. While she has told her story in carefully composed wordless narratives, words have long been an important part of Harvey’s creative process. She uses lists of words—not drawings—to creates her photographs. “Nouns are really important,” she quips. Harvey also uses words to spark ideas in her teaching at the Art Institute of Boston. She often has students create a photograph for the dusk jacket of famous books, such as The Catcher in the Rye.
Harvey herself is a voracious reader. She prefers novels to short stories because, she says, “stories just end too quickly.” The preference seems fitting: in a sense, Harvey’s best photographs are novel-like in the reverberations they create. The woman in her pictures is the heroine of sweeping, silent epics—they are a brighter and vintage dress-bedecked Anna Karenina, or Lolita, or Jane Eyre.
Cig's Three Favorite Novels (At The Moment)
1) God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
2) Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
3) Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeannette Winterson
Like the greatest literature, Harvey’s photographs courageously show us both the celebrations of life as well as the bruises: the haunting black and white images of her Tread Softly series feel wrought of fragility and heartache, while the photos in her portfolio The Impossible Tasks are ripe with hyperbole and a wry sense of humor.
Cig Harvey is writing a book—it just doesn’t happen to have any words, or end for that matter.
Cig on Cig: A Game of “Complete This Sentence…”
"The girl in my photographs is...me."
"I am happiest when...I wake up early, make coffee and take it back to bed and think about all the things I want to do and make that day. There is so much potential in the morning.”
"Water...makes me feel sane. I could never live in the middle of the country.”
"Vintage dresses are...delicious. They give you an opportunity to escape the normal.”
"When I teach...I think about my favorites times as a student. I try to be passionate, funny and all consumed.”
Joshua Bodwell, Associate Editor