Cig Harvey

Portrait (Wrapped), Rockport, Maine

2018

The subject is the conflation of women and the home. In the previous “Anonymous Women: Draped” photographic series, a lone woman is hidden in a vignette within the drapery, where she performs domestic trickery. The photographs are vignettes of women hidden behind drapes containing one figure and drapery, with an occasional prop or piece of furniture. In this series, “Reconstructed,” the woman becomes part of her domestic trappings and activities. I am creating narrative, full-size, still-life images comprised of many objects. “Reconstructed Series” is a commentary on our obsession with collecting, accumulating designing, and decorating, inviting hilarity and pathos about our relationship with “things.” They are installations made in the studio for the camera that play with color, space, and scale, and use household objects as subject matter. We are making a life-size box in the studio as a substitute for the home. A mannequin substitutes for the woman, who is camouflaged among her domestic objects in the space. The final outcome is a photograph and/or a short video. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago provided the basis of all of my work, and I continually seek to come to terms with it. I grew up when suburban life was idealized; the home was a place of perfection and harmony, free from the harsh realities of the city, without crime, or messy interiors, where everyone’s drapes and sofa matched, where people were normal, without dark little secrets. It was at a time when the “woman’s place...

Maggie Taylor creates evocative single-scene narratives in her whimsical and elaborate photomontages. Working intuitively, Taylor combines 19th Century photographs, found objects, an...