British-born, US-based artist Cig Harvey opened 2025 on the right note, with a January 1st Instagram post and reel set to the sound of Nina Simone’s 1965 classic, Feeling Good. In the post, Harvey ran her camera over the proofs of her powerful new Monacelli book, Emerald Drifters.
Gold Road - Cig Harvey - from Emerald Drifters
“Small increments of creativity, day by day, for four years, to make a book of heartbreaks and pleasures,” she wrote in the accompanying text. “A little can turn into a lot.”
It certainly has in this case. Emerald Drifters is a deeply moving volume, made up of 224 pages, 97 photographs, 30 vignettes, nine watercolor illustrations by the artist, as well as an accompanying essay by the poet Ocean Vuong.
Between its covers, Harvey’s personal recollections, familial exchanges, and brief, daily observations intersect with a beautiful series of images, filled with cakes, fruit, fish, flowers, the natural world, onto which humankind seems to encroach just a little, in the form of mossy highways, dewy country houses, and faceless, female figures.
Dark Cake - Cig Harvey - - from Emerald Drifters
The book is published in March, and is followed by a series of exhibitions, presenting texts and images in a gallery setting.
Emerald Drifters, the show, opens at Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, this April, before transferring to the Dowling Walsh Gallery in Maine – Harvey’s home state – for the summer. As autumn draws in, the exhibition hops the Atlantic, transferring to the prestigious Bildhalle Gallery, in Zurich, Switzerland.
Wisteria - Cig Harvey - from Emerald Drifters
This is a well-deserved international tour for an inimitable, prodigious, and ever-changing artist. Born Sara Harvey in rural England in 1973, Cig developed an early love for photography and began working in a community darkroom at the age of 13.
She received her MFA from Rockport College, Maine, in 1999, and has since had her work placed in the permanent collections of major institutions such as the Library of Congress, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; and the corporate collection of JPMorgan Chase.
Scout & the Peonies- Cig Harvey - from Emerald Drifters
She was awarded the Prix Virginia Laureate (2018), and the Maine in America Award by the Farnsworth Art Museum (2021). She was a nominee for the John Gutmann Fellowship, the Santa Fe Prize, the Prix Pictet, and a finalist for the BMW Prize, the Estee Lauder Collection, the Karl Lagerfeld Collection at Paris Photo, the Clarence John Laughlin Award, and The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.
She is represented by Robert Mann Gallery (New York), Peter Fetterman Gallery, (Los Angeles), Jackson Fine Art (Atlanta), Robert Klein Gallery (Boston), Dowling Walsh Gallery (Maine), and Bildhalle (Switzerland & The Netherlands). She has exhibited worldwide including at Paris Photo, Art Miami, and AIPAD (New York) for the past twenty years.
The Cherries - Cig Harvey - from Emerald Drifters
Interspersing her fine-art photography with occasional editorial work for such outlets as the New York Times, Harvey’s words and images remain deeply rooted in the transcendent experience of the quotidian.
“It mirrors real life, and real life can be complicated,” Harvey told thephoblographer.com recently. “I work initially from intuition, responding to the light with the gut, and then I analyze the contact sheets, brainstorm what I have learned, and expand from there. This process often involves a lot of writing and mind mapping to push the ideas further.”
The Banquet - Cig Harvey - from Emerald Drifters
She invites gallery goers to adopt a similar approach to her rich, engrossing selection of words and images. “Ultimately, I want the viewer to have the same experience with my pictures as I had when I made images,” she continued, “the feeling in the body that comes with bearing witness to something rare in the everyday.”
The Meadow - Cig Harvey - from Emerald Drifters
Are you able to bear witness at any of these galleries this year? If not, order a copy of Emerald Drifters here, and look out for a special Artspace limited edition with Cig Harvey in the coming months.
