Le Kim-My is a visual artist based in France. Her portfolio spans various genres and techniques, from nightlife and fashion photography to street snapshots and abstract series.
The one presented here is a saturated, ICM collection of experimental photography that “explores moments when darkness transforms bodies and alters the way they appear.”
Subjects of her photographs undergo a transfiguration, becoming one with photons, creating an aurora borealis out of nightclub lights and unrestricted movement. This freeing from the bonds of convention mirrors the artist’s personal experience. “After years spent working with data, code, and large-scale digital advertising systems driven by growth and optimization, photography emerged as a way to reconnect with a more sensory and human experience of the world,” explains Kim-My.
Her work reverberates with an intuitive approach and an intriguing zest for exploration and looking beyond the mirage of appearances. Through chromatic ghosts and otherworldly smokes-and-mirrors, Kim-My creates a bridge between the real and the surreal, between who we pretend to be and who we truly are. Her photography is not abstract but rather metaphysical, as she continues to capture ideas rather than palpable subjects.
This conceptualism is stretched even further as she delves into a surrender of inhibitions, provoking and instigating viewers to let go of their preconceptions and step into the freeing world of the night. “The night becomes a space of release and transformation,” Kim-My states, “where familiar boundaries loosen and new ways of inhabiting oneself and others can emerge.”
The photographer is deeply interested in deconstructing material concepts, rendering them temporary, to instead turn her lens and attention toward higher meanings. Through “distortion, gesture, and shifting visibility,” she aspires to capture what she calls the “impermanence of bodies and forms”—or more precisely, what humans are without their material selves.
Read our “Roots” issue in full
The new theme, born as usual from what the submitted works held in common, is “ROOTS.” Within its pages, we present the artworks, creativity, and inspiration of 60 visual artists and writers from 21 countries around the world. Their diverse voices come together around a shared exploration of the return to where one belongs, the invisible threads of tradition that shape identity, and the ongoing reconnection with nature, others, and oneself.
We’re a team of writers using our craft to spotlight art in its most honest form. RAWGUE. started as a bi-monthly editorial experiment where each issue’s theme is dictated by the submitted work, thus removing editorial bias from the equation and preserving a more raw approach. We focus on all forms of poetry: written, photographed, painted, drawn, and filmed.
