Deana Lawson

The first scholarly monograph devoted to Deana Lawson, published to accompany the first comprehensive museum survey of her work. Organized by curators Eva Respini and Peter Eleey, the book surveys roughly fifteen years of Lawson's practice, which draws on the family album, studio portraiture, staged tableaux, documentary photography, and found vernacular images to build narratives around family, love, desire, and Black identity across the African American and wider African diaspora. Lawson's photographs are made in close collaboration with her subjects, often posed nude or partially nude, embracing, or looking directly into the camera, deliberately unsettling the idea of photography as a passive or voyeuristic act.

The book also draws on the vernacular archives that have shaped Lawson's thinking, giving readers a sense of the source material behind her elaborately staged scenes. Essays by Respini and Eleey, Kimberly Juanita Brown, Tina M. Campt, Alexander Nemerov, and Greg Tate are accompanied by a conversation between Lawson and photography historian Deborah Willis. The exhibition traveled to ICA Boston, MoMA PS1, and the High Museum of Art. Faux leather binding with tipped-in cover image.