The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion, Fotografiska Sweden
Photographs by Campbell ADDY, Arielle BOBB-WILLIS, Micaiah CARTER, Awol ERIZKU, Nadine IJEWERE, Quil LEMONS, Namsa LEUBA, Renell MEDRANO, Tyler MITCHELL, Jamal NXEDLANA, Daniel OBASI, Ruth OSSAI, Adrienne RAQUEL, Dana SCRUGGS, and Stephen TAYO
Salon wall including: AB+DM (Ahmad BARBER and Donté MAURICE), Djeneba ADUAYOM, Lawrence AGYEI, Rasharn AGYEMANG, Araba ANKUMA, Bafic, Daveed BAPTISTE, Malick BODIAN, Kennedi CARTER, Jorian CHARLTON, Christian CODY, Faith COUCH, Delphine DIALLO, Rhea DILLON, Philip-Daniel DUCASSE, Christina EBENEZER, Justin FRENCH, Alexandre GAUDIN, Erica GÉNÉCÉ, Kenny GERME, Denzel GOLATT, Yannis Davy GUIBINGA, Travis GUMBS, Tyrell HAMPTON, Seye ISIKALU, Adama JALLOH, Manny JEFFERSON, Kreshonna KEANE, Ekua KING, Joshua KISSI, Casper KOFI, Olivia LIFUNGULA, Myles LOFTIN, MAHANEELA, Ronan MCKENZIE, Tyra MITCHELL, Fabien MONTINQUE, Sierra NALLO, Manuel OBADIA-WILLIS, Travys OWEN, Amber PINKERTON, Marc POSSO, Caio ROSE, Silvia ROSI, Lucie ROX, Makeda SANDFORD, Cécile SMETANA BAUDIER, Justin SOLOMON, TEXAS ISAIAH, David UZOCHUKWU, Juan VELOZ, Isaac WEST, and Joshua WOODS
The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion presents artists whose vibrant portraits and conceptual images fusethe genres of art and fashion photography in ways that break downlong-established boundaries. Their work has been widely consumed intraditional lifestyle magazines, ad campaigns, and museums, as well ason their individual social-media channels, reinfusing the contemporaryvisual vocabulary around beauty and the body with new vitality andsubstance. The images open up conversations around the representationof the Black body and Black lives as subject matter; collectively, theycelebrate Black creativity and the cross-pollination between art, fashion,and culture in constructing an image. Seeking to challenge the idea thatBlackness is homogenous, the works serve as a form of visual activism.It’s a perspective often seen from this loose movement of emergingtalents, who are creating photography in vastly different contexts—NewYork and Johannesburg, Lagos and London. The results—often madein collaboration with Black stylists and fashion designers—present newperspectives on the medium of photography and the notions of raceand beauty, gender and power.
This exhibition includes select works from these groundbreaking contemporary photographers, as well as a salon wall featuring images created by other young Black photographers contributing to this movement. Vitrines of publications, past and present, contextualize these images and chart the history of inclusion, and exclusion, in the creation of the Black commercial image, while simultaneously proposing a brilliantly reenvisioned future.
Antwaun Sargent is a writer, editor, and curator living in New York City. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, and various art and museum publications. Sargent is author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion (Aperture, 2019) and editor of Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists (2020). He is also a director at Gagosian Gallery.
The New Black Vanguard is organized by Aperture, New York, and is made possible, in part, by Airbnb Magazine and Tasweer Photo Festival, Qatar.
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