Deana Lawson at Dover Street Market

Join Aperture and Garage Magazine at Dover Street Market New York for the launch of GARAGE Issue 15, and her forthcoming volume Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph (Aperture, 2018). Lawson will be signing copies of both the magazine and monograph.

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.

Deana Lawson (born in Rochester, New York, 1979) received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her photography has been exhibited widely, including at the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and the 2018 Whitney Biennial. Lawson is assistant professor in visual arts at Princeton University, and is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.

Image: Deana Lawson, Nikki’s Kitchen, 2015; from Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph (Aperture, 2018)