Bailey Rigby. Image courtesy the artist.

It’s been a significant year for Bailey Rigby. She graduated from Utah State University in May and shortly after began working at Salt Lake City’s Modern West. Perhaps most importantly, she now finds herself at a juncture where her artistic identity is flourishing.

Her journey into photography began during a transformative two-week residency in Oklahoma with renowned photographer Kurt Markus. She continued her studies at the Utah State University. During her time there, she served as the photo editor of The Utah Statesman and worked as a gallery assistant at the Tippetts and Eccles Galleries. She shared her gratitude for the university, saying, “The art-making process evolved beyond what I had experienced before and really brought me to a more thoughtful and considered place with my photography.”

Following her graduation, she relocated to Salt Lake City, where she secured a position with Modern West. If you’ve visited the gallery over the past six months, you’ve likely seen her behind the desk or assisting during exhibition openings. When she’s not there, she’s busy interviewing and photographing the artists featured in exhibitions for online content. “It has been such a great learning experience marketing and writing about the artists we represent,” she says on her work at the gallery. “It has most definitely inspired my work and practice these past few months.”

The work she has undertaken at Modern West has served as a bridge from her academic pursuits at Utah State. She shared her perspective, noting, “While my thesis only depicted a small number of photographs, a large portion of the work was in the writing and research. I found an almost magical connection between sequencing photographs and sequencing words, and have found it to be an integral part of my creative process.”

Rigby’s photographic practice embraces autobiographical storytelling grounded in archival, iconographic, and experiential research. She describes her photographs as “dark, dreamlike compositions that often utilize allegory and metaphor to portray my narratives.”

In her “The Study of Last Things” series, Bailey Rigby narrates “an ongoing and unresolved pilgrimage of a personal faith crisis in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Bailey Rigby, “Eschatology,” 2023, archival pigment print, 20 x 13 in.

Bailey Rigby, “Fallen Ground,” 2022, archival pigment print, 14 x 20 in.

Bailey Rigby, “Black Sheep,” 2022, archival pigment print, 14 x 20 in.

Outside gallery hours, she has been exploring the ideas she brought with her from the university. “Only a few hours after graduation, I began jotting down ideas for a new body of work. I’ve spent the past few months initiating research and capturing images, even if they aren’t directly related to my initial concepts. I’m not sure where the final project will end up, but I’ve spent a lot of time visiting and photographing the places in Utah where my ancestors once lived.”

She says she’s “drawn to the anthropological aspect of religion and have been writing extensively about costly signaling and the complex religious systems established through tradition and social expectation. I hope to begin this as a more autobiographical series of photographs and build upon it as I work towards my MFA.’

Looking back at 2023, she says, “After six years of being a photographer and four years of meticulous practice during my undergrad, I finally feel that I have found the area of photographic artistry that resonates most profoundly with my voice.”

Bailey Rigby, “Revelation,” 2022, archival pigment print, 14 x 20 in.