08/21/2026
A special look at 51 Poppies by Cig Harvey, now on view in our Maine: A Force within American Art (1890–2026) exhibition.
"I created a time-lapse of a tabletop still life, but discovered that the table was never actually still. Cut flowers in their vases, seemingly a nature morte, constantly moved and bent sideways, reaching for water and light. The time-lapse condensed the extremes of a life, creating a space to see every moment of being from birth to death.
For each time-lapse, the camera took a photograph every thirty seconds, over the course of days, resulting in as many as 25,000 still images. In the time-lapse form, each individual picture is stitched to the next, giving the illusion of a video. Everything is in motion all at once. Just as in life, some things are more apparent, others barely perceptible unless you are truly paying attention. This distortion of time results in the unsettling feeling that the table is changing on a parallel plane, otherworldly. The time-lapses demand a slowing down. They have a mesmerizing, hypnotic effect.
For years, I have employed the camera as an extended eye to better understand the world, but these new experiments are a heightened and more focused inquiry. Similar to Eadweard Muybridge's studies of motion almost two hundred years ago, where, through a series of sequential photographs, he was able to discern 'what the human eye could not distinguish as separate moments in time,' I use photography to see more than our eyes can perceive. Like Muybridge, I work without sight; only when I stop the camera and look at the photographs sequenced in post-production can I see what really happened. These explorations of time, light, and space are both a scientific study and a philosophical inquiry, a memento mori—a reminder of the impermanence and brevity of life. Someone is dying as someone else is thriving. Everything is constantly changing. Nothing stays the same. In a world inundated by information at an accelerated pace, these time-lapses ask us to pay attention and be present." – Cig Harvey
📷Cig Harvey (born 1973)
51 Poppies, 2026
Moving image, color, silent; 23:00 minutes
Courtesy of the artist and Maine Media College
© Cig Harvey / Image courtesy of the artist
