YOFFY’S REVEAL

BY: Sarah Sunday

There is a notable balance between what a photographer allows the viewer to see and the aspects which remain concealed, held close to the photographer’s chest. Beyond the four walls of a framed image or just out of the bounds of focus lie shrouded details only privy to those present. The viewer sees and experiences what is revealed to them — at times only breadcrumbs, a hint of something more entirely whole. Occasionally it is a monsoon, a riptide of released sentiment and fervor. 

In an exploration of these dynamics, Yoffy Press presents the fourth publication in a series of triptychs. Reveal, brings together three female photographers, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Cig Harvey, and Andrea Modica. When in collaboration, the style of the three ripples and bounces off one another, each artist unveiling a unique faction of photographic art. 

In an excerpt, Debbie Fleming Caffery muses, “Today, I remain fascinated by dark interiors of bar rooms in small towns, graveyards, and churches at night. Every winter during the sugar cane grinding season, I return to the fields, and sugar mills — to see what they reveal. I am never disappointed.” Caffery speaks on her early experiences in mysterious and alluring scenarios. In her black and white images, these inner thinkings are present. They are dark, obscure, and heavy laden with shadows. Many of the settings in which Caffery shoots seem lived in, yet somehow still neglected. Her subjects give the impression of American people doing the best they can to get by in the tumultuous trajectory of life.

The work of Cig Harvey relentlessly pinpoints the eyes, whether averted or directly honed in. When speaking on a physics of light textbook, Harvey notes that the book says, ““Light is photons, molecules, atoms,” but none of these words describe how I feel when I watch you turn gold standing in the kitchen on a Tuesday morning in August. If light is just science then why am I on my knees under a November indigo sky insisting there must be a god?” Exuberant color and halting eye contact, Harvey’s work is not the least bit submissive, but still natural and seemingly candid. In a display of humans in the various stages of the days and seasons, the viewer is made to recall the antidote, “The eyes are the window to the soul.” 

Young people sidle up to stand before Andrea Modica’s camera in groups of two. Premature confidence — and even slight defiance — muddled with the naivety that is intertwined with coming-of-age is evident and worn haphazardly on the subjects’ sleeves. Shot in black and white, the pairs of friends appear unusually relaxed, arm in arm or alongside one another. Modica notes, “The view camera requires slowing down, which encourages conversation and collaboration between photographer and subject. Information unfolds during this dance, revealing things I could never imagine nor invent. For precisely this reason, the large format camera is responsible for my ongoing passion for our medium throughout my four decades as a photographer.”