In The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion,
curator and critic Antwaun Sargent addresses a radical transformation
taking place in fashion and art today. The featuring of the Black
figure and Black runway and cover models in the media and art has been
one marker of increasingly inclusive fashion and art communities. More
critically, however, the contemporary visual vocabulary around beauty
and the body has been reinfused with new vitality and substance thanks
to an increase in powerful images authored by an international community
of Black photographers.
In a richly illustrated essay, Sargent opens up the conversation around
the role of the Black body in the marketplace; the cross-pollination
between art, fashion, and culture in constructing an image; and the
institutional barriers that have historically been an impediment to
Black photographers participating more fully in the fashion (and art)
industries.
Fifteen artist portfolios feature the brightest contemporary fashion
photographers, including Tyler Mitchell, the first Black photographer
hired to shoot a cover story for American Vogue; Campbell Addy, founder
of the Nii Agency and journal; and Nadine Ijewere, whose early series
title, The Misrepresentation of Representation, says it all. Alongside a
series of conversations between generations, their images and stories
chart the history of inclusion, and exclusion, in the creation of the
commercial Black image, while simultaneously proposing a brilliantly
reenvisioned future.
Photographs by Campbell Addy, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Micaiah Carter, Awol
Erizku, Nadine Ijewere, Quil Lemons, Namsa Leuba, Renell Medrano, Tyler
Mitchell, Jamal Nxedlana, Daniel Obasi, Ruth Ossai, Adrienne Raquel,
Dana Scruggs, and Stephen Tayo
And including conversations with Shaniqwa Jarvis, Mickalene Thomas, and
Deborah Willis
