Art. Deana Lawson. Images of Black Bodies and Intimacy.

Deana Lawson, Black Woman Photographers, Black Contemporary Artists


Deana Lawson is an American fine art photographer and currently a lecturer at Princeton University. Her body of work features stark, yet intimate portraits of black bodies. I was immediately drawn to her images, as they seemed to employ a very specific lens that is rarely focused on the bodies of black women. While her images are frank in nature there’s a peace about them. They seem to exist for existence’s sake, rather than acting solely as a tool to make a commentary on the way that black bodies are portrayed in the larger sense. This gravitas is still present. She alludes to it in her artist statement,

Deana Lawson’s photographs are inspired by the materiality and expression of black culture(s) globally. Her work negotiates a knowledge of selfhood through a profoundly corporeal dimension. Lawson’s pictures speak to the ways that sexuality, violence, family, and social status may be written, sometimes literally, upon the body.


Deana Lawson, Black Woman Photographers, Black Contemporary Artists

Deana Lawson, Black Woman Photographers, Black Contemporary Artists

Deana Lawson, Black Woman Photographers, Black Contemporary Artists

Deana Lawson, Black Woman Photographers, Black Contemporary Artists

Deana Lawson, Black Woman Photographers, Black Contemporary Artists

Deana Lawson, Black Woman Photographers, Black Contemporary Artists


For more information visit www.DeanaLawson.com.