The Magical Eye of Maine Photographer and Writer Cig Harvey

I was introduced to Maine photographer Cig Harvey’s work with her first book, You Look at Me Like An Emergency: A Collection of Journeys, Secrets & Wishes (Schilt Publishing, 2012). That same year I was able to attend her inspiring talk about her life and work at The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts. Extra lucky because I got the last signed copy of her book that night!

Cig has a gorgeous way of looking at and capturing the world around her, and how she uses and sees color in her photography is transformative. Color, light, and mood are powerful visual tools. She pulls together rich visual compositions that make you look and feel. In her latest book, Emerald Drifters (Phaidon, 2025), she highlights the power and beauty of color with intense and subdued hues from every spectrum of the color chart-cherry red, emerald green, tulip pink, saffron yellow, snow white. Simple objects and scenes become sublime through her lens.

Her exhibit in the summer of 2023 aptly named FEAST at the Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, Maine, was a literal feast for the eyes, showcasing Cig’s vibrant color photography in massive scale on the walls, along with the baking talents of her young daughter Scout on a dramatic tablescape of fanciful cakes and lit candles. The great news for New Englanders is that another show tied to the release of her latest book will open later this summer (on August 1, 2025) at the same gallery. You should go. You will not be disappointed. Her work is pure magic.

Please enjoy this selection of Cig’s words and photos from her new book, Emerald Drifters.

The Magical Eye of Maine Photographer and Writer Cig Harvey | Emerald Drifters

“Red is the oldest color.

The first organic red paints, inks, and dyes came from animals, plants, and minerals: ocher from the ground, scarlet from the dragon’s blood tree, crimson from kermes insects, and the dark rust of iron ore from space.

Maine is the place in the continental United States where the light hits first each and every morning. I live on the land of the Wabanaki, the People of the Dawn. The Wabanaki are thought to be the descendants of the Red Paint People, a five-thousand-year-old maritime tribe who thrived on the coast of Maine. They mixed seal oil and ocher to paint their dead red before covering the bodies in crushed red hematite, a mineral not found in Maine.”

“It’s early March in Maine. Spring is still eight weeks away. It has been winter for months. All the trees are dead, nails and hair have stopped growing, bones feel brittle. Our tarnished eyes heave exhausted from a monochromatic landscape.”

“Off the coast of Maine, on the island of Vinalhaven, a small antique shop sits on stilts above the millpond. It’s full of found treasures, everything and nothing you need. Antique textiles and linens fill the tables and shelves, embroidered with initials and dyed in every color. Pinks and Reds from madder and cochineal, a sea of blues soaked in indigo, blacks and purples from logwood, and my favorite a radiant yellow dyed with goldenrod flowers.”

“This yellow is a flaming Baked Alaska. Each mouthful is a jolt to the central nervous system. A combination of flavors and textures, hot and cold, soft and crunchy, rich and light, sweet and salty. Every bite, a blend of your greatest love and your worst heartbreak.”

“Until recently, men have always fought over the color purple. Purple dye was hoarded by the Roman Empire because it was so rare and expensive, costing an aristocrat a year’s allowance for a pound of pigment. Tyrian purple was the color reserved for kings, emperors, and bishops: their robes, togas, and sashes dyed in the tears of crushed sea snails, clothes steeped in sadness.”

“Cakes have been used since the beginning of time to celebrate, commemorate, and commiserate. We map our lives in cakes: birthdays, graduations, weddings, funerals. Good or bad, everyone has a cake memory.”

“The color pink sends love notes to the pituitary glands, the ones that regulate the hormones. In turn, the hormones regulate every decision we make—like whether to eat cake or go back to bed. Color is a serious business.”

“It is a scientific fact that color affects the body. This is the reason why cherry blossoms in spring are so dangerous. Beware: this pink near that blue sky is explosive—the memory alone is enough to get me through the winter. Every April in Japan, fearless picnickers gather under these trees to eat their strawberry sandwiches while contemplating the ephemeral nature of life. In the language of flowers, cherry blossoms are a symbol of mortality. It’s that heartbreaking, short-lived beauty that makes us ask such existential questions of a flower.”

“As you slow your breathing, the blue that is left inside of you intensifies. 

Hold your breath between the ins and outs—a cobalt vibrates in the throat. Soon, the blue will seep into the neglected areas of your body, indigo staining the red heart, cerulean seeping into the gut, and ultramarine, that blue from beyond the ocean, settling into the bones. The body is sapphire.”

“In the time it took to write this sentence, somebody died, somebody was born, a language disappeared, a forest burn began, an insect was crushed, an idea inched forward. When I am dying, I want to think of the bounty of an orchard, a tree laden with a thousand apples, rosso corsa, and bees abounding.

Beauty is in the commonplace. Be here now. Look at this. Experience this. Feel this.”

Learn more about Cig’s work at cigharvey.com.

Heather Marcus

Heather Marcus is the senior photo editor for Yankee. She works closely with the art director and contributing photographers to tell our stories about people and place in a compelling way. Living and growing up in New England, she continues to be inspired by the communities, the landscape, and the wonderful visual opportunities the region affords.

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