Includes essays by Eva Respini and Peter Eleey, curators of the exhibition
With contributions from Kimberly Juanita Brown, Tina M. Campt, Alexander Nemerov, and Greg Tate
Conversation between the artist and Deborah Willis
Deana Lawson, the first scholarly publication on the artist Deana Lawson, surveying fifteen years of her photography, will be published to accompany the first comprehensive museum survey exhibition featuring Lawson’s artwork. A singular voice in contemporary photography, Lawson has been investigating and challenging conventional representations of black identities in the African American and African diaspora for over fifteen years. Her work samples numerous photographic languages, including the family album, studio portraiture, staged tableaux, documentary pictures, and found images, creating narratives of family, love, and desire. Lawson’s photographs are made in collaboration with her subjects, who are sometimes nude, embracing, and directly confronting the camera, destabilizing the notion of photography as a passively voyeuristic medium. Whether in posed photographs or assembled collages, Lawson’s works channel broader ideas about personal and social histories of black life, love, sexuality, family, and spiritual beliefs. This publication will include selections from Lawson’s personal family photographs and archives of vernacular images that have profoundly informed her work.
Deana Lawson published on the occasion of the traveling exhibition, ICA/Boston, November 3, 2021–February 27, 2022; MoMA PS1, April 14–September 5, 2022; and High Museum of Art, October 7, 2022–February 19, 2023.
Published by Mack Books, 2021
Hardcover with 144 pages
11 1/2 x 9 3/4 inches (29.21 x 24.76 cm)
