I have long been a fan of Aubrey Hays. Her work is consistently and provocatively emotive. Her lyrical and richly colored work often leaves me with the feeling that I have myself experienced her moments down to the details of sound, color, air and breath.

I recently visited Aubrey’s website and was drawn to her most recent series, Red Herring. This series of photographs is distinctly different than previous works which caught me off guard. It then dawned on me that I am drawn to this series because it offers almost exactly the opposite experience of her previous work. These portraits are about what you don’t see, what the color and smoke obscure. In her previous work we are given the experience, given the emotion and left to decipher it in whatever way is fitting to us. In the Red Herring series we as viewers are activated. We are missing part of the portrait and are left to question just that. In each photograph we are given a piece of a human within an environment which informs the experience. Each glimpse is a piece of the puzzle. Aubrey is asking us to fill in the blank, calling our perspective as viewers into question and holding us accountable for our narrative.

-Liz McDonald

Red Herring
2012

http://aubreyhays.net