New! Fares Micue is back. 🍁❄️

Happy November, collectors! With autumn fully underway and the festive holiday months upon us, we’re kicking off this busy season with a double(!) release from 20x200 collector-favorite photog, Fares Micue. Abundance is everywhere and Enduring the cold winter celebrate seasonal palettes and self love, and we’re here for all of it. 

 Employing her signature abstract and conceptual self-portrait style, Micue transforms botanicals and bodily forms into bursts of rich color. Departing from the compositions in her debut 20x200 editions—Forest lights and The moment is now—Micue’s new works are zoomed in, focused on her body enveloped in vibrant vegetation. Abundance is everywhere is awash in a deep, autumnal ochre. Micue’s figure is tightly positioned in a self hug, warmly lit from the left—the last remnants of harvest season light. In contrast, a soft, cool light illuminates Enduring the cold winter. Here, Micue rests gently folded in a nest of icy blue leaves. 

 Micue’s aesthetic is unmistakable. In creating her conceptual photographs, her process is extremely precise, her final images meticulously composed, each element carefully considered. There is so much mood, emotion, and symbolism in these photographs because Micue approaches each image as a self-contained story. (You can hear more about Micue’s process directly from the artist on My Modern Met’s podcast.) She has a penchant for creating different characters, acting out each part. Her face is often obscured, drawing viewers deeper into the work, igniting their imaginations; some might be more inclined to see themselves in her photos or pick up on personal meaning in their metaphors. Take your reality into your own hands, they seem to say. Go inward, connect to emotion, find authenticity, don’t be afraid to dream.   

A self-taught photographer, Micue picked up the medium a little over a decade ago, and found it especially well-suited to translating the inner workings of her mind to the visual plane. In her personal search for fulfillment, she became increasingly drawn to the camera as an avenue of self-discovery, in conversation with her writing practice. (On her Instagram, you’ll find her work accompanied by prose that adds another layer of meaning to each image.) 

 Photography brings her joy, but it also offers her a means of sharing her journey—and a way of encouraging others to prioritize their own self-exploration. In exemplifying the exercise, her images urge viewers to take the time to meditate on their experiences, to visualize their dreams, to pay attention to their mental state, be present, and cultivate awareness. The photos are infused with positivity, and it radiates outward. “I want my images to give hope and teach people to appreciate themselves, to love, dream, and believe that everything is possible if we believe it is,” Micue says. Sounds good to us.