In her relatively short career of over ten years, the photo artist, Deana Lawson, became an iconic photographer, telling the often untold stories of the black community either in the United States, Africa, or South America. Her intense, formal, highly stylized portraits of black people in their private surroundings have no sense of activist tendency. Also, her photographs have been well received within the framework of black activist groups. The new book, titled Deana Lawson, published by Mack in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and Moma PSI, is a well-printed overview of her body of work, provided with eloquent and explanatory texts of different scholars.

‍

In many of the analogue - and therefore subdued coloured - portraits, all securely and evenly lit by artificial light, and all captured in the intimate and personal environment of their rooms and homes, we see black people, often naked or semi-naked, lying on their bed or sitting on their sofas. Lawson is interested in family life and the intimacy of people’s homes. So we see Ashanti lying naked on the bed, with no sheets, bare walls, in a pose well known in the tradition of painting. There is Diva, at 73 Years Old, semi-naked on her blue seats in her well-decorated house. And we see the young couple Binky and Tony Forever in an intimate pose on a bed with a golden coloured cover in a neat and orderly room.

‍

The photographs clearly show that the sitters are very comfortable with the photographer, inviting her to join the intimacy of their lives, showing their bodies, homes, and even more, their intimate gaze. We see women posing in a semi-erotic posture, men holding their rifles or lying on top of their cars, couples seemingly making love, or just holding each other in the kitchen. All portraits have a formal character, which can only have been made possible with a cumbersome, slow camera. It shows that Deana Lawson uses a big 8x10 inch camera, inscribing herself in the tradition of American photography, with Alec Soth and Diana Arbus as some of the highlights.

What is so unique about the book Deana Lawson is the combination of photographs and essays about the photographer, explaining her work from various angles and standpoints.

‍

Tina M. Campt writes about the “gaze” in the work of Deana Lawson. We, as spectators, she writes: “are captured in an inscrutable and inscrutably powerful Black gaze.” Traditionally, the concept of “gaze” has been used for the dominant white gaze, but we meet the oppositional gaze in these photographs. A black gaze transforms viewers into witnesses and demands a confrontation. Campt writes: “In Lawson's work, it is a confrontation with our discomfort in embracing Black life imaged so unapologetically on its own terms.”

‍

Deana Lawson has been influenced by vernacular black photography, not the least by the photographs of her father made for the family albums. Maybe that is the reason why she does not crop her subject to a close headshot, which does not belong to the language of the family picture. Another surprising influence might be the Kodak factory. Lawson was born in Rochester, the hometown of Kodak, and her family had a close relation to Kodak. In an interview with Deborah Willis, Deana explained her loyalty: “My grandmother cleaned houses for George Eastman, and my mother worked as an administration assistant at Kodak.”
‍

‍

As may be expected, the work of Deana Lawson is not apolitical. On the contrary, the intimate family-like portraits depict black women and men and form a voice against the humiliations and exploitation of the black American community. Apart from making photographs herself, Lawson also collects photos, like the pictures of murdered black women, which she put on the wall of her exhibition at the MoMa Psi. She creates assemblages of vernacular pictures, which she uses as a “metaphor for history”, as Peter Elley notes in his essay.

‍

After seeing this book, the reader will look at black people more culturally and nuanced, getting beyond the stereotypes we have been fed with by news channels.

The photobook, Deana Lawson, is an outstanding book, first of all in terms of print quality. The photographs look crispy and rich in colour and tone. But secondly, in terms of information. In a rich body of work like that of Lawson, the reader needs a cultural evaluation of the artworks in a broader societal context, which is provided by the seven different textual contributions from scholars and critics. After seeing this book, the reader will look at black people more culturally and nuanced, getting beyond the stereotypes we have been fed with by news channels.