The North Carolina Museum of Art presents Reveal: Portraits by Carrie Levy a solo exhibition, on view through January 26, 2014, featuring photographs selected from several of Carrie Levy’s series created over the past decade: Domestic Stages, Polaroids, and You Before All.
Vulnerable, disquieting, and unsettling, Levy’s portraits explore the politics of representation— the gaze of the photographer and the subject of the gaze. By obscuring or withholding the face, twisting and contorting the pose, or tightly cropping the image, Levy abstracts the human body in intimate images.
While a majority of the subjects are turned away from the camera or partially obstructed from view, eyes darkened or body contorted to stay concealed, they still portray a strong sense of intimacy and exposure. The photographs from Levy’s Domestic Stages, for example, consist of portraits of her friends and family members in their homes, unclothed yet hiding their faces. Similarly, the photographs selected from the artist’s You Before All series are cropped images of undressed males, showing just a grimacing face, exposed collar bone, or bare chest. Levy explains, “These works capture the way in which we stare at one another in silent judgment. I’ve chosen to use naked bodies to amplify the vulnerability of my subjects.” www.ncartmuseum.org