Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph

“An Aperture monograph”–Preliminary page

• A landmark first book by a powerful and original voice in photography
• An exquisitely reproduced, radical vision of America and the African diaspora

Deana Lawson is one of the most powerful photographers of her generation. Her subject is black expressive culture and her canvas is the African Diaspora. Over the last ten years, she has created a visionary language to describe black identities, through intimate portraiture and striking accounts of ceremonies and rituals. Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph features forty beautifully reproduced photographs, an essay by the acclaimed writer Zadie Smith, and an extensive interview with the filmmaker Arthur Jafa.

Deana Lawson (born in Rochester, New York, 1979) (born in Rochester, New York, 1979) received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her photography has been exhibited widely, including at the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and the 2018 Whitney Biennial. Lawson is assistant professor in visual arts at Princeton University, and is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.

Zadie Smith is the author of the acclaimed novels White Teeth (2001), The Autograph Man (2003), On Beauty (2006), NW (2013), and Swing Time (2016), and the essay collections Changing My Mind (2010) and Feel Free (2018). Winner of the Whitbread first novel award and the Guardian First Book Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, the Commonwealth Writers’ first book award, and the Orange Prize, and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, she is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and Harper’s.

Arthur Jafa is a filmmaker and cinematographer whose work includes Love Is The Message, The Message is Death (2017), Happy Birthday, Marsha!, Sharifa Walks (2015), In the Morning (2014), and Dreams Are Colder Than Death (2014), I Am Ali (2002), Rouch in Reverse (1995), and Daughters of the Dust (1991). Jafa has exhibited his work at major institutions and galleries, including the Whitney Museum of American Art; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York; the Serpentine Galleries, London; the Vinyl Factory, London; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.