A boyfriend served up for breakfast and a forest floor burning in the shape of a deer: this new exhibition shows just how much thought goes into a staged photograph

A naked young man lies across a kitchen table beside plates of toast, grapefruit and a cup of juice, with a halved papaya resting on his hip, while a woman sits behind him holding a spoon — *Start off your day with a good breakfast together*, 2009 (Image credit: Pixy Liao)

Some of the best photographs are spontaneous: the result of being in the right place at the right time. But at the other end of the spectrum, there are photographs that are purposely, meticulously staged. And that's the common theme uniting two new solo shows at CPW in Kingston, New York right now.

On the face of it, these pictures don't seem to have anything in common. In Pixy Liao's funny and intimate images, she and her partner act out a series of domestic scenes. Tanya Marcuse's, meanwhile, are dense, dark and unsettling concoctions of antlers, bones, roots, flowers and fire.

What unites them, though, is that neither photographer left anything to chance. Furthermore, both are packed with the kind of delicious detail that rewards slow, careful and inquisitive viewing.

Flipping the power dynamic

Liao, a Chinese artist who lives in New York, has been making staged self-portraits with her partner, the Japanese-born artist and musician known as Moro, for almost 20 years now. Typically, these images flip the typical power dynamics of straight couples, and of artist and muse.

In one, Moro lies semi-naked across a kitchen table between a plate of toast and half a grapefruit, a papaya on his hip, while Liao sits behind him with a spoon. In another, she carries him over her shoulder like a sack of laundry, through an impeccably tidy living room.

In a bright, minimalist living room, a woman in a white T-shirt and red running shorts carries her naked partner slung over her shoulder, both looking calmly towards the camera. — *Carry the Weight of You*, 2017 (Image credit: Pixy Liao)

A naked couple lie stacked on top of each other on a pile of three mismatched floral mattresses in a bare, sunlit room, the woman peering out from beneath the man and holding a shutter release cable — *How to build a relationship with layered meanings*, 2008 (Image credit: Pixy Liao)

In a sunlit room with tall windows overlooking Venetian buildings, a man in white briefs crouches in a wide stance while a woman presses close behind him, as he holds out a shutter release cable. — *Support each other and share everything,* 2022 (Image credit: Pixy Liao)

You'll notice the shutter release cable in almost every frame. Sometimes it's in Liao's hand, sometimes in Moro's. It's a neat visual joke, and means you're never sure who's in charge of the picture.

Titled Relationship Material, their exhibition at CPW – originally organized by the Art Institute of Chicago – brings together color photographs, soft sculptures and music videos from PIMO, the offbeat music duo the pair formed together.

Beauty and decay

Marcuse, who teaches photography at Bard College in New York, puts a lot of effort into planning her images too. For her series Woven: An Ecological Tapestry (2015-2020), she spent months gathering, arranging, painting, burning and transplanting natural materials to create vast tableaux of forest floor.

Characteristically, she combines things that never naturally appear together: spring growth in autumn landscapes, flowers and animals encased in ice, birds buried in the earth. The result is a world whose natural rhythms have been knocked out of sync, a commentary on climate change.

"Through these constructed ecologies, I attempt to hold together beauty and terror, reverence, and grief," says Marcuse. "Woven is a meditation on the fragile worlds we are in the process of undoing."

Seen from above against dark, blue-tinted woodland ground, a deer-shaped mass of charred material smoulders with flickering orange flames around its outline. — *Deer Nº 9578*, from the series *Deer* (2023-25). (Image credit: Tanya Marcuse)

The pale, weathered remains of a deer lie on dark earth, scattered with vivid crimson leaves and small blue petals. — *Deer Nº 7084*, from the series *Deer* (2023-25). (Image credit: Tanya Marcuse)

A dense forest floor tableau of moss, leaves, berries, ferns and wildflowers dusted with frost, with a bleached ribcage and an animal skull half-hidden among the plants. — *Woven, No. 30*, detail, 2018 (Image credit: Pixy Liao)

Eight key images from Woven are on show, alongside Frame, a 5 x 10-foot installation built from wood and found flora and fauna. The latter keep drying, decaying and decomposing throughout the run, making this one exhibition that rewards more than a single visit.

Pixy Liao: Relationship Material and Tanya Marcuse: Woven, An Ecological Tapestry are at CPW, 25 Dederick Street, Kingston, NY, until January 17. Also on show until November 1 is Closeness, a student exhibition by Phocus, Vassar College's photography club and community darkroom, exploring how the presence of a camera changes a moment. CPW is open Thursday to Sunday, 11am to 5pm, and admission is free.

Tom May is a freelance writer and editor specializing in art, photography, design and travel. He has been editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine. He has also worked for a wide range of mainstream titles including The Sun, Radio Times, NME, T3, Heat, Company and Bella.