By Emma Fiona Jones
Carly Ries is an artist and curator working with images, photo books, and archives. I was first introduced to them by photographer Justine Kurland at her Dumbo studio, where the group show Garden—featuring a photo book, video installation, and window transparency by Ries—was on view from December 14, 2024–January 8, 2025. The exhibition grew out of an experimental workshop run by Kurland and Speciwoman founder and director Philo Cohen that Ries participated in.
In 2019, they published the first edition of Centerfold, a photo book juxtaposing Ries’ portraits and botanical photographs with strategically manipulated images drawn from 1980s pornographic magazines depicting lesbian scenes enacted for male pleasure. Images are interrupted with overlays and made multiple through the use of vellum pages, shifting the dynamic between subject and object.
I recently sat down with Ries in their Bed-Stuy studio to discuss Centerfold, gender, the gaze, and the physicality of the image.
EFJ: Tell me about Centerfold. How did the project first come about?
CR: I’ve always been interested in the power dynamics of who’s looking at who, and the agency of the person being photographed. I loved trying to find the ways that the models in the pictures were slipping outside the bounds of the directions given by the photographer on set. They were doing these repeated gestures. Everything was shot on film, everything had to be orchestrated and choreographed—so you can see this boredom seeping in. But in that boredom, sometimes you would see that the two women who had been placed together might have a natural way that their bodies were falling together, in the way that would happen if you were spending time with your coworker or your friend doing this repetitive scene. But there was a physicality and an intimacy between the participants that wasn’t sexual—or it could’ve been—but that was intimate, that was outside of the gaze, that was visible but because it was so separate from what the purpose of the images are. The people who were making the porn or the people who were buying it weren’t going to notice it. But it was there. I was looking for the things that slipped outside of the gaze, but that were visible all along.
I was looking for the things that slipped outside of the gaze, but that were visible all along.
And I put the images in conversation with my own images that I had made with a friend of mine, Ruby, who’s also an artist. I’d done this set of portraits of her that I didn’t know what to do with when I made them. I was like, these are intense. They don’t belong with anything else. And when I encountered the pornography, I was like well, this is the counterpart. Because there’s a friendship between me and my fellow queer artist, and beyond being a willing participant in what we were doing, she was a full-blown collaborator in the pictures. They wouldn’t exist without her. Same with the models in the pornography. The pictures wouldn’t exist without their participation and creative contributions. Having her as a counterpart highlights the subjectivity of the individuals, because she’s a known person, whereas they’re all a cast of many different characters, and there were repeating people.
EFJ: In Centerfold, there seem to be these protective layers built in, these mechanisms that redirect the viewer’s gaze.
CR: [I didn’t want to] show you the thing you would expect to see. I thought of it as: if the models were to come across my book now, how would they feel, seeing their images? I didn’t want to enact a violation. But I also don’t get rid of nudity or sex. I just use the layering of images to camouflage. Things are visible, but lightly obscured. I like playing with the seen and the unseen.
EFJ: How do you view your relationship with your own subjects or collaborators?
CR: I’ve always thought of them as collaborators because the images don’t exist if they’re not there to help me make them. But I consider them subjects too because I author the images. I’ve been photographing people nude since I was a teenager. I did a project photographing older women. I always said, if you’re willing to be photographed, you can leave on as much clothing as you want. The idea was to take these embodied pictures. So, from the jump, someone can choose what they’re comfortable with, so that’s the ground that we start with. We often photographed in people’s homes. So often we’re in an environment that isn’t artificial. It’s more about the relationship that we build during that moment.
I used to be overly cautious, and then I realized that the people who want to be photographed feel a lot less protective of themselves than I thought. It’s a self-selecting situation. There are a couple of friends of mine who I’ve photographed over the years, but it’s always been portraits because the feeling in their bodies is that they don’t want to be naked. I don’t have that sort of relationship with them, but I have a series of psychological portraits of them. But for other people, it comes more naturally to be at ease in your body, and some people seek it out, they want to be photographed.
As much as the image is mine, I always feel like their image is also theirs. So, if we made it together, the way it is enacted in the world always has to be on those same terms of mutuality.
EFJ: Is that partly what drew you to books as a medium or format—the ability to control the way that the image is enacted in the world?
CR: I struggle with putting my imagery on the internet because it’s such a fast thing, and also portraits are sort of commodified online. We had that moment as the image was being created, and I have this kind of feeling about this image, and then I’m just going to put it up and have it dissipate in a moment? And I don’t know if anyone’s going to take the time to look at this image of this person. With a book, it’s this intimate viewing experience.
Returning an image to an object, it becomes possible to think about the person a little bit more, because you’re holding something physical.
EFJ: Do you feel like there are ways in which your experiences growing up inform your current work or the way you relate to your subjects?
CR: I grew up in Baltimore, and my mom was always taking pictures. I was always making things, and when I was 14, she showed me how to use her 35 mm. Shortly after that, she got sick with breast cancer, which she recovered from, but it was several years of treatment.
Before she got sick, I was photographing her, because she was a readily available subject. She is not naturally someone who wants to have her picture taken, but she was allowing me to do it as I was starting out and needed a subject. And then when she got sick and started to have reconstructive surgery, we started to play with the tropes of art history together. The process was very collaborative, and she felt really good about at least making something from her experience. And it was really helpful to me. She showed them to her doctor, who thought they were great. He was like, if you want, I can find other women who’d be interested in this. That was a project of mine that I did for many years.
That’s how I got started. It was the beginning of trying to think about gender and body modification. But I didn’t want to be a documentary photographer or jump from a group of people to a group of people. So, I ventured out into my own realm.
My own top surgery was partially related to having a breast cancer gene. I had known from a very young age that I would have to do something. Doctors never presented that I could just go flat. It was always about reconstruction, and it really depressed me for many years. I stalled out about what I was going to do. But then I realized that there’s totally another way to be, and it connected so much with my queerness.
The surgery allowed me to experience my gender as a more ambiguous thing, and to let my interior self match my exterior self for the first time ever. If it wasn’t for the cancer gene, I don’t know if I would’ve had the guts to do it. I think about it, but it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. So, in that vein, I’ve been photographing myself, since just before my surgery to now. But I now use my body as a tool to explore bodies in general and their relationship to space and environment and creatures and fluidity. In a way it reverts to the early work I did.
EFJ: The word “slippery” comes to mind with your work.
CR: I love that it’s so hard to put language to gender, and in that way, I find that it’s slippery. And while it’s frustrating in some ways not to feel like you are in one way or another, it’s much more freeing to feel like you’re one foot in, one foot out. In that way, I think of my gender as slippery, and I really enjoy that. Not slippery as in you’re going to slip and fall—slippery in the sense of you might be able to hold it for a little while but it’s going to slip out.
EFJ: Does that relate to your use of film, materially or conceptually?
CR: Film is a physical material. It’s a little unruly, in the sense that sometimes things don’t register on it the way you had hoped. But you can sometimes get lucky—I always shoot when there’s not enough light, because you just never know, very interesting things can happen, and then they can exist more in the subconscious space. I like that film is not a perfect dance partner, because it enables chance to happen, and the material itself to have its own agency.
I like that film is slippery. I like things that don’t necessarily behave all the time. And that’s also why photographing people who aren’t used to being photographed all the time is interesting. Like you get the image that you think you can get. But also, there are micro-expressions on people’s faces, and you might get the one that’s right after the one that you want to get. It’s about how you relate to people.
I like that film is slippery. I like things that don’t necessarily behave all the time.
EFJ: Going back to the origins of the Garden show, the workshop with Justine Kurland and Philo Cohen, how do you work towards carving out the art world you wish to see?
CR: I value having studio visits that are not about something necessarily happening, but just a chance to enter into what someone’s doing. I like the reciprocity of going to someone else’s space and seeing how they think.
In Baltimore and Chicago where I went to school, it’s cheaper and there are apartment galleries. I grew up having these ad-hoc spaces, which are great, but difficult to have in New York.
Books are a huge way that I feel like I can show up for people, so I go to book signings every week, and there’s such an exchange that happens. And the photo book community is really supportive. Publishing is a large beast. But on the smaller level, people who are into it are really interested in sharing and being collaborative. And that art world can be a positive place that’s very generative. And it’s not all individual’s work—it’s people mining archives, it’s people seeing someone else’s work and wanting to make a book for them. And I would love to do that myself. I’m talking with a couple of friends of mine about collaborating on a book, although it’ll probably take years for it to actually happen.
You can find more of Ries’ work on their website.
