Carrie Levy's photography is very disturbing and different for me to look at, she caught my eye because her photos have a dark tone to them. And you do not get them right away. To even begin to understand what is going on in the photo, who it is in the photo, and why they are posed the way they are I found myself needing to study them for 3-5 minutes, and I kept going back to look at certain ones again.
One photo in her series called "Polaroids" particularly stuck out to me because as soon as I saw it, I started to create a story in my head. The photos before and after it also influenced the story I created. I saw this series as people being stuck in their own heads, almost showing people in an insane asylum. And this woman standing on the box has her own world in her mind and isn't quite conscious to the world around her with everyone else. I think Carrie Levy also has an interest in showing ambiguous sexuality and gender identity. Faces are rarely shown, especially in this series, there are a lot of turned heads from the camera, bodies are shown not as gender specific, and male/female anatomy is not shown a lot in this series. It is more just bodies. Bodies, backs, spines, torsos are decaying.
One photo in her series called "Polaroids" particularly stuck out to me because as soon as I saw it, I started to create a story in my head. The photos before and after it also influenced the story I created. I saw this series as people being stuck in their own heads, almost showing people in an insane asylum. And this woman standing on the box has her own world in her mind and isn't quite conscious to the world around her with everyone else. I think Carrie Levy also has an interest in showing ambiguous sexuality and gender identity. Faces are rarely shown, especially in this series, there are a lot of turned heads from the camera, bodies are shown not as gender specific, and male/female anatomy is not shown a lot in this series. It is more just bodies. Bodies, backs, spines, torsos are decaying.
In another series, called "Impaired", Carrie Levy has taken all color photos of people in different awkward, uncomfortable looking positions with their bodies. Again, there are no faces shown, just contorted bodies. In each photo the people seem to be working, working with objects and each others bodies. This photograph below stuck out to me, for some reason it made me think it's a sort of interpretation of a woman's menstrual cycle, because of the red and spilt black on the floor. But then I think about it again and I think that's completely wrong. What is interesting about this photo is that I do not get it at all. But I love the shape that the man is making with his hands splayed out. And it would not be as powerful if you could see his face. In this whole series you feel like you're getting a story of some sort but the missing faces add an eerie, creepy feel to every photo.
Looking through all of Carrie's photographs, I see some similarities in the way that I take pictures. I sometimes like to focus on one part of the body, a part that is expressive. Whether that be the face, legs, hands… It is also interesting to see her experiment with backgrounds going from floors, to normal everyday scenes in rooms to solid colored backgrounds. Something else interesting about the people in most of her photographs (especially in the series "Domestic Stages") the subjects are all facing away from the camera and it feels very strained. Like they are stuck in a faceless world and no one will ever be able to see what they look like, it feels sad and shameful.
Overall Carrie's photographs show people that look uncomfortable, and if it shows someone smiling, there is something else off about the photo and how it is set up. They are beautiful and simple, but painful and complicated.
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