Please join us at The National Arts Club for a conversation between pioneering artist Coreen Simpson and Aperture editor in chief Michael Famighetti, celebrating her prolific career and her recent publication, Coreen Simpson: A Monograph (Aperture, 2025).
Coreen Simpson—photographer, writer, jeweler—has done it all. Working for publications such as Essence, Unique New York, and The Village Voice, from the late 1970s onward, Simpson photographed New York’s art and fashion scenes, producing portraits of a wide range of Black artists, literary figures, and celebrities. Her iconic jewelry, the Black Cameo, has been worn by everyone from the model Iman to civil-rights leader Rosa Parks. Coreen Simpson: A Monograph, Simpson’s first monograph, features her celebrated B-Boys series—portraits of young people coming of age during the early years of hip-hop—as well as her experiments with collage and other formal interventions.
To learn more about this event and to register, see here.
—
Image: Coreen Simpson, Jamien, 1982, from the series B-Boys, from Coreen Simpson: A Monograph (Aperture, 2025). Courtesy the artist
Coreen Simpson (born in New York, 1942) is a celebrated photographer and jewelry designer from Brooklyn, whose career has spanned more than five decades. Her work has been featured in Essence, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and Vogue, among other publications. Her photographs are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Bronx Museum; Le Musée de la Photographie, Belgium; and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, among others.
Michael Famighetti is editor in chief of Aperture magazine and the editorial program. In 2013, he organized a relaunch and reconceptualization of the magazine, which won a 2018 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Together with guest editor Sarah Lewis, Michael is recipient of an ICP Infinity Award for Critical Writing and Research for “Vision & Justice,” the Summer 2016 issue of Aperture. In addition to editing the magazine, Michael works with the digital team to shape online content, and commissions and edits books. He is currently also a visiting critic at the University of Hartford’s MFA program, and a participant in the School of Visual Arts’s Mentors program. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Bookforum, and Aperture, among other publications. He is a member of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and has been a guest reviewer and speaker at many international festivals and institutions.
You may also like
Fe Avila Seeks the Liberation of Desire
The Brazilian photographer makes a utopian world encompassing moments of raw, unmediated freedom.
Why an Influential Stylist Turned to AI
Years after retiring from an illustrious career as a stylist, Simon Foxton was lured back into image-making by fresh new faces. The only catch is, they don’t exist.