Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph

Deana Lawson is a highly influential photographer who focuses on black expressive culture and the African Diaspora. She uses large-format cameras to capture intimate portraits and striking depictions of ceremonies and rituals. Her work often features nude bodies and is compared to the photography of Diane Arbus, Jeff Wall, and Carrie Mae Weems. Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph showcases forty-five of her photographs and includes an interview with filmmaker Arthur Jafa.

Deana Lawson is one of the most powerful photographers of her generation. Her subject is black expressive culture and her canvas is the African Diaspora. Over the last ten years, she has created a visionary language to describe black identities, through intimate portraiture and striking accounts of ceremonies and rituals. Using 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-five beautifully reproduced photographs and an extensive interview with the filmmaker Arthur Jafa.