Aperture Presents David Alekhuogie: A Reprise 

New York, August 5, 2025—This month Aperture publishes David Alekhuogie: A Reprise, the first monograph by the acclaimed Los Angeles–based artist. In his debut volume, Alekhuogie considers the intriguing legacy of narrative and authorship behind Western presentations of African art, and poses timely questions about how Black aesthetics are circulated, accessed, valued, and interpreted today. An exhibition of work from A Reprise will be presented by Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, from September 2 through October 18, 2025.

In 1935, Walker Evans was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, to photograph hundreds of African sculptures for the exhibition African Negro Art. Sixty-five years later, the Metropolitan Museum of Art organized Perfect Documents: Walker Evans and African Art, 1935, revisiting Evans’s tightly cropped images. In A Reprise, Alekhuogie investigates Evans’s photographs, provocatively remixing them into his own vibrant and multilayered collages. Transposing facsimiles of masterpieces of African art onto paper structures of his own making, Alekhuogie rephotographs these image-sculptures—often using East and West African textiles as striking backdrops—thereby inviting multiple dimensions of viewership.

Alekhuogie’s images draw upon the musical idiom of the reprise—a performance of repetition—and stake a claim to crucial, restorative ideas around Black antiquity by questioning our relationship to what we consider fake or original, art or archive. A Reprise is designed by the Brooklyn studio Other Means and includes essays by Wills Glasspiegel and Wendy A. Grossman, and an interview by Zoë Hopkins.

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David Alekhuogie (born in Los Angeles, 1986) is a photographer and artist based in Los Angeles. He received his MFA from Yale University in 2015 and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013. He was selected by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, to participate in the Made in LA 2025 biennial. His work was also included in Companion Pieces, the 2020 iteration of the Museum of Modern Art’s biennial New Photography series, and was presented in Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth (2021) at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. From 2024 to 2025, he was a fellow of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. He has had solo exhibitions at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; and Chicago Artist Coalition; and he has participated in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His work has been published in Aperture, Foam, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time, and Vice.

Wills Glasspiegel is a filmmaker, artist, and organizer from Chicago. He works with the Era Footwork Crew and codirects the nonprofit Open the Circle. He has directed a range of short films, including Icy Lake (2014), Bang’n on King Drive (2015), Meet the Era (2016), and Footnotes (2021). He holds a PhD in American studies and African American studies from Yale University.

Wendy A. Grossman is an art and photography historian, writer, educator, and curator based in the Washington, DC, area.

Zoë Hopkins is a writer and critic based in New York. She received her BA in art history and African American studies from Harvard University and her MA in modern and contemporary art at Columbia University. Her writing has been published in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Cultured, and The New York Times.

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This book was made possible thanks to the Joy of Giving Something Foundation (JGS) and is supported by the Aperture JGS Book Award. The goal of this award is to support deserving artists whose work holds the potential to shape the field of photography. David Alekhuogie: A Reprise is available at aperture.org/books

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About Aperture
Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From its base in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through its acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs,” Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society.

Aperture’s programs and operations are made possible by the generosity of our board of trustees, our members, and other individuals, and with major support from 7G Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, Documentary Arts, Ford Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Marta Heflin Foundation, Ishibashi Foundation, Joy of Giving Something, Anne Levy Charitable Trust, Henry Luce Foundation, Mailman Foundation, MurthyNAYAK Foundation, Grace Jones Richardson Trust, San Francisco Foundation, Thomas R. Schiff Foundation, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Stuart B. Cooper and R. L. Besson, Kate Cordsen and Denis O’Leary, Thomas and Susan Dunn, Agnes Gund, Michael Sonnenfeldt, Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts, with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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Press contact:
Lauren Van Natten, publicity@aperture.org