Deana Lawson (b. 1979, Rochester, New York) makes photographs that explore the Black familiar and its relationship to lore, global histories, and mystery traditions. She transforms observational picture-making into a powerful mode of expression, critique, and celebration. Romance and intimacy between subjects, as well as ritual and spirituality appear throughout Lawson’s work, often within the same image. Her photographs emphasize formal approaches to film commonly associated with both Western and African twentieth-century portraiture practices, in addition to appropriation and uses of vernacular imagery. Lawson engages her subjects with intention and intuition alike, in staged situations characterized by the piercing directness of the model’s gaze. With their meticulous mise-en-scènes filled with personal artifacts and decor, these portraits underscore the psychological connections between people and their domestic spaces, fusing biography, symbolism, and cultural observation, and creating expansive images of contemporary personhood.
In 2022, Deana Lawson was awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, an influential and longstanding prize that awards artists and projects which have made a significant and original contribution to the medium of photography over the preceding twelve months. She is the first artist working in photography to be awarded the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize by the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which presented a solo exhibition of her work at the museum in 2021. Lawson’s first museum survey was presented in 2021 at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, which traveled to MoMA PS1, Queens, New York, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, in 2022. She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions including Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2020); Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (2019); The Underground Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2018); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2017); and Art Institute of Chicago (2015). Her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Lawson lives and works in Los Angeles.
Deana Lawson
Black Gold ("Earth turns to gold, in the hands of the wise," Rumi), 2021
pigment print with embedded hologram
58 x 71 5/8 inches
(147.3 x 181.9 cm)
Deana Lawson
Salmo 91, 2021
pigment print
50 x 60 5/8 inches
(127 x 154 cm)
Deana Lawson
Dana and Sirius B, 2021
pigment print with 4 x 6" glossy print of Dana
50 x 60 1/2 inches
(127 x 153.7 cm)
Deana Lawson
Nation, 2018
pigment print, collaged photograph
55 1/2 x 67 1/4 inches
(141 x 170.8 cm)
Deana Lawson
The Garden, Gemena, DR Congo, 2015
pigment print
55 x 69 1/2 inches
(139.7 x 176.5 cm)
Deana Lawson
Cowboys, 2014
pigment print
40 x 50 inches
(101.6 x 127 cm)
Deana Lawson
Hellshire Beach Towel with Flies, Portmore, Jamaica, 2013
pigment print
40 x 50 inches
(101.6 x 127 cm)
Deana Lawson
As Above, So Below, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2013
pigment print
44 x 35 inches
(111.8 x 88.9 cm)
Deana Lawson
Congregation, 2012
pigment print
35 x 44 inches
(88.9 x 111.8 cm)
Deana Lawson
Dirty South, 2010
pigment print
24 x 29 1/2 inches
(61 x 74.9 cm)
Deana Lawson
Sharon, 2007
pigment print
40 x 51 inches
(101.6 x 129.5 cm)
Deana Lawson
Emily and Daughter, Appropriated Image, Date Unknown, 2015
pigment print
46 3/4 x 35 inches
(118.7 x 88.9 cm)
Deana Lawson and Arthur Jafa