You Look at Me Like an Emergency

Sakshi Parikh delves into Cig Harvey’s life, as she talks about her relationship with her family, finding true love and striking a perfect balance between reality and fantasy.

Whether set up or found, preconceived or in-the-moment, Cig Harvey’s images evoke a sense of mystery and wonder, and often involve human interaction with the natural world. When I saw her work for the first time, I so was pulled in by the strength and vibrancy of the images that I was a little cautious of being seduced.

While observing it, I felt like I was suspended somewhere between a teenage novel and a mother’s world. The ambiguity both drew me in and left me wondering.

Diaristic Visualisations

Over the years, Cig’s tenacity, brought about by an extreme and infectious passion for photography, opened up new avenues for her, all of which she was able to accomplish from the assuring space of her farmhouse, located on the coast of Maine. Here, she lives with her husband Doug, daughter Scout and their rescue dog, Scarlet.

In the 25 years she has been photographing, Cig channeled her genius towards exploring her inner self, in the form of self portraits. For her, the process was extremely cathartic. “I finally found my voice of expression through photography, and it was because I began making pictures about things, rather than of things”, she said.

An avid black and white photographer in her early years, Cig began making colour photos with an idea of exploring everything she has had to get over in her past. An extension of her black and white work, the colour images laid the groundwork for her first photobook, You Look at Me Like an Emergency.

An Emotional Urgency