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Deana Lawson — Black Horizons
Deana Lawson — Black Horizons
Deana Lawson — Black Horizons
Deana Lawson — Black Horizons
Deana Lawson

Black Horizons

2020

Black Horizons, a large-scale pigment print completed in 2020, exemplifies Deana Lawson's sustained commitment to imaging Black life with ceremonial gravity and unflinching intimacy. Measuring 127 by 174.3 centimeters, the work commands the wall with a physical authority that mirrors its conceptual weight, drawing the viewer into a constructed scene that sits deliberately at the threshold between documentary impulse and choreographed vision. Lawson's photographs resist easy categorization, operating in a space where the personal and the mythological converge, where individual subjects become figures in a longer, collectively held narrative. Lawson, who was awarded the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 2022, works in close collaboration with her subjects, often staging scenes in domestic or intimate environments that carry the residue of real life while simultaneously ascending toward something emblematic. Her prints have a dense, almost painterly quality that rewards sustained looking, and Black Horizons is no exception, with its tonal richness and deliberate compositional structure reflecting the artist's rigorous attention to the formal language of the image. The framed work is presented in an edition consistent with Lawson's practice of producing prints that function both as art objects of considerable presence and as documents of an expansive, evolving visual archive. Represented by David Kordansky Gallery, Lawson occupies a singular position in contemporary photography, with works held in major institutional collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Acquiring Black Horizons offers collectors the opportunity to engage with one of the most intellectually and aesthetically rigorous bodies of work being produced today, a practice that continues to expand what photography can hold and what it can ask of its audience.

Medium
Pigment print
Overall
Location
David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

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About this work

Deana Lawson, Black Horizons, 2020

Black Horizons, a large-scale pigment print completed in 2020, exemplifies Deana Lawson's sustained commitment to imaging Black life with ceremonial gravity and unflinching intimacy. Measuring 127 by 174.3 centimeters, the work commands the wall with a physical authority that mirrors its conceptual weight, drawing the viewer into a constructed scene that sits deliberately at the threshold between documentary impulse and choreographed vision. Lawson's photographs resist easy categorization, operating in a space where the personal and the mythological converge, where individual subjects become figures in a longer, collectively held narrative. Lawson, who was awarded the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 2022, works in close collaboration with her subjects, often staging scenes in domestic or intimate environments that carry the residue of real life while simultaneously ascending toward something emblematic. Her prints have a dense, almost painterly quality that rewards sustained looking, and Black Horizons is no exception, with its tonal richness and deliberate compositional structure reflecting the artist's rigorous attention to the formal language of the image. The framed work is presented in an edition consistent with Lawson's practice of producing prints that function both as art objects of considerable presence and as documents of an expansive, evolving visual archive. Represented by David Kordansky Gallery, Lawson occupies a singular position in contemporary photography, with works held in major institutional collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Acquiring Black Horizons offers collectors the opportunity to engage with one of the most intellectually and aesthetically rigorous bodies of work being produced today, a practice that continues to expand what photography can hold and what it can ask of its audience.

Medium
Pigment print
Dimensions
overall: 127 x 174.3 cm
Year
2020
Seen at
David Kordansky Gallery, United States

Related themes

Mohn Art Collective

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