Mystery and intimacy
Harvey's new exhibition, now on display at the Masterworks Foundation Gallery.
The experience of the relationship between home and dweller is explored in a series of photographs of a woman and her home, in which intimacy is evoked only to be transcended by the anonymous and universal.
Any attempt to identify the human subject is fleeting -- Harvey captures only hands, feet, torsos or the edges of bodies, never an entire person.
In one photograph, a woman is caught in motion as she turns up a stairway. The substance of the individual dissolves into mist -- a ghost, suggesting motion and the passage of time. The subject is light, airy, feminine, ethereal. She is swallowed into the timeless action of descending and ascending the stairs in the home, a passage made thousands of times within a life. Another photograph reveals a nude woman standing, back to camera, hands pressed against doorframe, long hair loosely coiled. There are signs of recent life in the background -- crumpled bedsheets on an unmade bed. A photograph in a frame on a night table in the background is out of focus, once again suggesting intimacy but displacing it to anonymity.
A pear sits on a corner of a table in another photograph, white table cloth falling in waves out from under it. The background is hazy and out of focus.
There is something subtly suggestive about both the pear itself and its positioning on the edge of the table. It is smooth, contained, dense. It's sharp definition against the diffused light in the background implies weight and importance, perhaps hinting at the sweetness within.
The photographs all seem to suggest a life going on beyond them, but never reveal more than fragments. The hands are especially expressive, always seeming to be caught in mid-gesture, mid-thought.
In one photograph a lacy hem of a nightgown brushes the ankles of a pair of feminine feet, paused as if someone had suddenly spoken to their owner. Light shines on the swirled patterns of the wooden floorboards.
In another, the elegant swoop of gold studs on the wood frame of a couch and the thickly textured pattern of couch fabric suggests a wealth of knowledge untold about the person in the photograph. There is only a slim edge of a woman's body visible. Her arm is held out, hand curled shut, caught in mid-thought. The curtain in the background cascades to the floor.
In the following photograph a woman stands in a worn housedress in front of a wood shingled wall in the sun. The strings of her housedress are tied unevenly -- one of the tiny moments of eloquence that defines this exhibition. Although her face remains unseen, it is easy to imagine her squinting her eyes against the bright light.
Harvey imbues ordinary details with grace. In one photograph, a brown paper bag hangs as elegantly as a dress from a coat rack on the wall. In another, a gleam of water shines luminescent on bathroom tile.
Only two photographs -- one of a flower bud and another of the corner of a ceiling -- diluted the atmosphere of the show. They appeared leached of colour and texture, almost to the point of invisibility. Although they are perhaps not strong enough to stand alone anywhere, they are not enough to weaken the effect of the entire body of work seen together.
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