The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion, Saatchi Gallery, London

Photographs by Campbell Addy, Arielle Bob-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, Yagazie Emezi, Justin French, Alexandre Gaudin, Erica Génécé, Kenny Germé, 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 Montique, Sierra Nallo, Manuel Obadia-Wills, Travys Owen, Amber Pinkerton, Marc Posso, Caio Rosa, 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 fuse the genres of art and fashion photography in ways that break down long-established boundaries. Their work has been widely consumed in traditional lifestyle magazines, ad campaigns, and museums, as well as on their individual social-media channels, reinfusing the contemporary visual vocabulary around beauty and the body with new vitality and substance. The images open up conversations around the representation of the Black body and Black lives as subject matter; collectively, they celebrate Black creativity and the cross-pollination between art, fashion, and culture in constructing an image. Seeking to challenge the idea that Blackness is homogeneous, the works serve as a form of visual activism. It’s a perspective often seen from this loose movement of emerging talents, who are creating photography in vastly different contexts—New York and Johannesburg, Lagos and London. The results—often made in collaboration with Black stylists and fashion designers—present new perspectives on the medium of photography and the notions of race and 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.