The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion, Tasweer Photo Festival

Curated by Antwaun Sargent

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

Also including a salon-wall of photographs by:

AB + DM (Ahmad Barber and Donté Maurice), Lawrence Agyei, Rasharn Agyemang, Daveed Baptiste, Kennedi Carter, Faith Couch, Yannis Davy Guibinga, Delphine Diallo, Christina Ebenezer, Justin French, Erica Génécé, Denzel Golatt, Travis Gumbs, Seye Isikalu, Adama Jalloh, Manny Jefferson, Joshua Kissi, Myles Loftin, Mahaneela, Ronan Mckenzie, Tyra Mitchell, Travys Owen, Lucie Rox, Makeda Sandford, Cécile Smetana Baudier, Texas Isaiah, Isaac West, 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 homogenous, 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.

From March 24 through May 30, Qatar Museums will present The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion, as part of the inaugural Tasweer Photo Festival Qatar, which draws innovative international photography together with photographers and photographic communities in Qatar and the Western Asia and North Africa (WANA) region. The exhibition will be on view at M7, Doha’s hub for innovation and entrepreneurship in the creative industries, which serves as the the central location for Tasweer. The exhibition in Qatar is made in collaboration with Tasweer’s Artistic Director Charlotte Cotton and Sarah Foryame Lawler, Curatorial Assistant at Qatar Museums

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 made possible, in part, by Airbnb Magazine.