Christy Lee Rogers: ÉLAN

December 1 -14, 2014
Opening: Saturday Dec 6, 6-10pm

For its US debut, contemporary photographer and visual artist Christy Lee Rogers exhibits her whimsical new collection ÉLAN with Graphite Galleries in the French Quarter.

ÉLAN: French for vigour, spirit, and an enthusiasm typically revealed by assurance or brilliance of performance, is a fitting title for her new body of completely un-manipulated photographs, heavily influenced by Paris and the circus in its many guises. To capture these images, Christy flew to Las Vegas, Nevada, USA where she worked with ten of the world’s most extraordinary performers; dance masters, synchronized swimmers, aerialists, pole dancers and actors. “You know a true talent by the enthusiasm they bring to their performance and to everything around them. That energy just exudes out of them and it’s so inspiring,” she says.

Christy is revered by painters for her uncanny ability to master chiaroscuro lighting, a contrast between light and dark used to great effect by the late Renaissance master Caravaggio. The technique lends a baroque sensitivity to her works, which are all shot underwater.

Christy Lee Rogers is a visual artist from Kailua, Hawaii. Her obsession with water as a medium for breaking the conventions of contemporary photography has led to her work being compared to Baroque painting masters like Caravaggio. Boisterous in colour and complexity, Rogers applies her cunning technique to a barrage of bodies submerged in water during the night, and creates her effects naturally in-camera using the refraction of light. Through a fragile process of experimentation, she builds elaborate scenes of coalesced colours and entangled bodies that exalt the human character as one of vigour and warmth, while also capturing the beauty and vulnerability of the tragic experience that is the human condition.

Rogers’ works have been exhibited throughout the US and Europe and are held in private and public collections throughout the world. She has been featured in International Magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar Art China, Eyemazing, The Independent, Casa Vogue, Photo Professional and others. Rogers’ work Reckless Unbound is currently housed at Longleat in the UK; the stately home which is the seat of the Marquesses of Bath and also home to Renaissance gems of the Italian masters, like Titan’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt.