CHRISTY LEE ROGERS
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 color 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 colors and entangled bodies that exalt the human character as one of vigor and warmth while also capturing the beauty and vulnerability of the tragic experience that is the human condition.
Rogers’ works have been exhibited internationally from Paris, London, Mexico City to Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Los Angeles, and more and are held in private and public collections worldwide. She has been featured in International Magazines, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar Art China,
Elle Decoration, Global Times, The Independent, Casa Vogue, Photo
Technique, Photo Korea, and others. Rogers’ “Reckless Unbound” is currently housed at Longleat House 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.” Rogers’ art has been featured on several album covers, and in 2013, her images were selected for the 2013–2014 performance season of the Angers-Nantes Opera in France. Although she mainly still shoots in Hawaii, Rogers currently lives in Nashville, TN, where she also spends her time as a mother, a filmmaker, and a musician.
WATER AS AN ARTISTIC SOURCE
My purpose behind the work is to question and find understanding in the craziness, tragedy, vulnerability, beauty, and power of mankind.”
“What I find fascinating about water is that it presents a dichotomy of opposites, which is so similar to humans. It can be peaceful, purifying, and nurturing, but it can also be devouring, powerful and lethal. The ocean in Hawaii is so rough that people get terribly hurt with crashing waves and persistent currents. The body can’t exist underwater but yet the body requires water to survive. It is what life is made up of. It nurtures and destroys. We all have good and bad in us, the ability to create and destroy.
I want to look into that area of the human condition and explore. Water is really the best place to do this.”
“Water has always been a refuge for me. I have this crazy profound love for it. When I was young most of my free time was spent in the ocean, pools, waterfalls, in the canal next to my house, or in the rain. Water was always a peaceful place to go that would purify me physically, mentally, and spiritually. It’s the reason I thought to use it as an artistic source for my first experimentations, and then I fell in love with the results, which seemed like magic. It’s a lot of fun to be able to create magic. And it was the missing element in my vision as an artist because now I could create things that
were not completely what the naked eye would see. This was a bigger challenge, and the water proved to be simultaneously very destructive and powerful, which I was fascinated with.”
REACHING FOR SOMETHING GREATER
“As an artist, sometimes you tend to lock yourself away in your art and not look too much at the work of other artists. In my first series, I specifically made it a point not to use too many visuals as inspiration because I didn’t want to unconsciously copy but rather let the work come freely from me. I couldn’t live without music and poetry, and so these naturally became my inspiration, setting the atmosphere for my work. During Odyssey, I was reading Michelangelo’s poetry. Such beautiful, powerful, and compassionate expressions that came from a man that truly understood the depths of mankind and was reaching for something greater than this world and life itself!”
BEAUTY IS WHAT KEEPS US ALIVE
“The story of the sirens is so beautiful. Some people think that the myth is too dark because lured by the beautiful voices of the sirens, men would throw themselves overboard from their ships to their death. But I see beauty so great that this would be the only way to express this majestic love-- that men would be willing to die for it. How incredible.”
“Beauty is what keeps us alive. It’s that aesthetic quality that takes your breath away lifts your spirit, and inspires. Without beauty, I dare say that mankind would be in a very bad state, although that’s really an impossible state because someone would make it. That’s how important beauty is and how native it is to us.”