Copyright Deana Lawson
Deana Lawson makes photographs that explore the Black familiar and its relationship to lore, global histories, and mystery traditions. She transforms observational picture-making into a powerful mode of expression, critique, and celebration. Romance and intimacy between subjects, as well as ritual and spirituality, appear throughout Lawson’s work, often within the same image. Her photographs emphasize formal approaches to film commonly associated with both Western and African twentieth-century portraiture practices, in addition to appropriation and uses of vernacular imagery. Lawson engages her subjects with intention and intuition alike, in staged situations characterized by the piercing directness of the model’s gaze. With their meticulous mise-en-scènes filled with personal artifacts and decor, these portraits underscore the psychological connections between people and their domestic spaces, fusing biography, symbolism, and cultural observation, and creating expansive images of contemporary personhood.
Tickets are recommended to be purchased in advance, but will also available at the door.
The Wish You Were Here series is generously supported by Thomas N. Tischer, PhD.
Upcoming Events in this Series
Talks | Wish You Were Here: Philip Montgomery
Philip Montgomery chronicles the complexities of American life, with its fractures and forms of connection. His images speak to an America in a constant state of transition.
Talks | Wish You Were Here: Ahndraya Parlato
Ahndraya Parlato is an artist and writer who combines photography and writing to explore psychology, fantasy, and perception. Throughout her career, she has repeatedly engaged with the notion of “reality” and various gendered social constructs.