Deana Lawson is one of the most intriguing photographers of her generation. Over the last ten years, she has created a visionary language to describe identities through intimate portraiture and striking accounts of ceremonies and rituals. Using medium- and large-format cameras, Lawson works with models she meets in the United States and on travels in the Caribbean and Africa to construct arresting, highly structured, and deliberately theatrical scenes animated by an exquisite range of color and attention to surprising details: bedding and furniture in domestic interiors or lush plants in Edenic gardens. The body-often nude-is central. Throughout her work, which invites comparison to the photography of Diane Arbus, Jeff Wall, and Carrie Mae Weems, Lawson seeks to portray the personal and the powerful in black life. Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph features forty beautifully reproduced photographs, an essay by the acclaimed writer Zadie Smith, and an expansive conversation with the filmmaker Arthur Jafa.

Author Biography

Deana Lawson (born in Rochester, New York, 1979) is a photographer based in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, and her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Lawson is currently assistant professor in visual arts at Princeton University. Arthur Jafa is a filmmaker and cinematographer. He has directed several films, including Sharifa Walks (2015), In the Morning (2014), and Dreams Are Colder Than Death (2014), and was the cinematographer for Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and, more recently, Solange’s music video Cranes in the Sky (2016). Jafa’s work has been shown at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Serpentine Galleries, London; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.

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