As the design industry reexamines its emphasis on Eurocentric ideologies and wrestles with its conventional practices, Centered advocates for highlighting and giving a voice to the people, places, methods, ideas, and beliefs that have been eclipsed or excluded by dominant design movements.

Curated by Kaleena Sales, a powerful voice and noted advocate for diversity in the design community, the thirteen essays and interviews in this volume feature important and underrepresented design work and projects, both historical and present-day, including:

• Gee’s Bend Quilters, by Stephen Child and Isabella D’Agnenica
• A Chinese Typographic Archive, by YuJune Park and Caspar Lam 
• Indigenous Sovereignty and Design: An Interview with Sadie Red Wing (Her Shawl is Yellow)
• The Truck Art of India, by Shantanu Suman
• New Lessons from the Bauhaus: An Interview with Ellen Lupton 
• Vocal Type: An Interview with Tré Seals
• Decolonizing Graphic Design, A Must, by Cheryl D. Miller 
• And more

Filled with striking visuals from a range of global designers, Centered is a must-read and must-have for design practitioners, educators, students, and anyone interested in expanding narratives and gaining a more inclusive understanding of design diversity and its impact on culture.

"One of the great overlooked luminaries of American picture-making." –The New Yorker

In 1983, Baldwin Lee (born 1951) left his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, with his 4 × 5 view camera and set out on the first of a series of road trips to photograph the American South. The subjects of his pictures were Black Americans: at home, at work and at play, in the street and in nature. This project would consume Lee—a first-generation Chinese American—for the remainder of that decade, and it would forever transform his perception of his country, its people, and himself. The resulting archive from this seven-year period contains nearly 10,000 black-and-white negatives. This monograph, *Baldwin Lee*, presents a selection of 88 images edited by the photographer Barney Kulok, accompanied by an interview with Lee by the curator Jessica Bell Brown and an essay by the writer Casey Gerald. Arriving almost four decades after Lee began his journey, this publication reveals the artist’s unique commitment to picturing life in America and, in turn, one of the most piercing and poignant bodies of work of its time.

An accessible and popular introduction to African photography and film from the mid-twentieth century to the present day

Drawing from archival imagery and documents, interviews with the photographers and filmmakers (in some cases family members and/ or close associates), and with contributions from writers, scholars, and curators, The African Gaze is a mapping of and an introduction to the postcolonial African moving and still image.

In The African Gaze, based on the university course of the same title, author Amy Sall looks at ways in which artistic expression in photography and cinema engendered discourses concerning identity, power, and self-determination.

Colonial photography deprived Africans of agency, rendered them voiceless, and classified them as subaltern. In colonial photography, African people were subjected to a physical positioning and gaze which took away their autonomy and allowed western viewers to perceive them as primitive. African photographers and filmmakers from just before independence and onward (and in some cases even earlier), were able to reclaim this power and allow their communities to see themselves as they were, and explore their social, economic, and political conditions from their own perspective.

This is a timely publication as engagement with Black and African histories is stronger than ever before (and long overdue). The major names of African photography, such as Malick Sidibé, Sanlé Sory, and Seydou Keita have become highly collectible in the art market and African cinema, pioneered by Ousmane Sembene in 1960s Senegal, is now recognized for its creative innovation and storytelling.

The acclaimed, definitive and essential guide to 1980s Jamaican Dancehall—featuring hundreds of photographs with interviews and biographies

This widely admired book, back in print with a new introduction, captures a previously unseen era of musical culture, fashion and lifestyle. With unprecedented access to the incredibly vibrant music scene during this period, Beth Lesser’s photographs are a unique way into a previously hidden part of Jamaican culture. Born in the 1950s out of the neighborhood sound systems of Kingston, Dancehall grew to its height in the 1980s before a massive influx of drugs and guns made the scene too dangerous for many.
Dancehall is a culture that encompasses music, fashion, drugs, guns, art, community, technology and more. Many of today’s music and fashion styles can be traced back to Dancehall culture and continue to be influenced by it today.
Dancehall is an essential reference book for anyone interested in reggae, as well as a unique photographic and textual sourcebook of the musical, cultural and political life of Jamaica.
In the early 1980s, as Jamaica was in the throes of political and gang violence, Beth Lesser ventured where few other dared, documenting the producers, singers, DJs and sound systems who all made a living out of the slums of Kingston. This book is a thrilling record of the exciting, dangerous and vibrant world of Dancehall.

"The British-Ghanaian artist creates compelling character studies of people who don’t exist, reflecting her twin talents as a writer and a painter" –Zadie Smith, the New Yorker

This volume gathers around 60 works by British artist and writer Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, internationally celebrated for her paintings of timeless subjects in everyday moments of happiness, comradery and solitude. The publication includes texts by Yiadom-Boakye herself, writer and filmmaker Kodwo Eshun, and curator Lekha Hileman Waitoller.
Yiadom-Boakye’s lush oils on canvas or coarse linen portray fictitious characters rendered in loose brushwork and set against dramatic backgrounds. The figures are composites drawn from different sources including scrapbooks and drawings. Animals such as birds, foxes, owls and dogs make regular appearances. To look at a Yiadom-Boakye painting is an invitation to slow down and observe, to enter the imaginary visual tales she spins.
Born and raised in London by Ghanian parents, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (born 1977) studied at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design and Falmouth College of Arts, and received her MA from the Royal Academy Schools in 2003. Her first solo exhibition was held at Jack Shainman Gallery in 2010. Since then, her work has been exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery in London (2015), the Venice Biennale (2013), the New Museum in New York (2012), the Biennale de Lyon in France (2011), the Studio Museum in Harlem (2008) and many others. Her work has been collected by the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

"For all our sakes, I hope Deborah Roberts continues to stake a claim, through her work, for a more expansive view of Black children." —Dawoud Bey

The definitive look at two decades of work by Austin-based artist Deborah Roberts (born 1962) with newly commissioned texts and a thorough dive into her archive, this monograph offers a comprehensive view of one of today’s most significant social observers. An extensive plate section is accompanied by a heartfelt foreword from Dawoud Bey on "the tragic mischaracterization of Black children"; an insightful essay from Ekow Eshun on the social and political histories of innocence, race and the fractured nature of the contemporary Black experience; a celebratory tribute from author and artist Carolyn Jean Martin on the musicality, humility and generosity of Roberts’ practice; and a free-ranging conversation between Roberts and cultural historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis.
By using images from American history, Black culture, pop culture and Black history, Roberts critiques perceptions of ideal beauty and challenges stereotypes. She combines found and manipulated images with hand-drawn and painted details to create hybrid figures, often young girls and increasingly Black boys, whose well-being and futures are equally threatened because of the double standard of boyhood and criminality that is projected upon them at such a young age. Each child has character and agency to find their own way amid the complicated narratives of American, African American and art history.
Deborah Roberts (born 1962) is a mixed-media artist whose work challenges the notion of ideal beauty. Her work has been exhibited internationally across the US and Europe, and is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; The Studio Museum in Harlem; LACMA, Los Angeles; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX, among other institutions. Roberts received her MFA from Syracuse University. She lives and works in Austin, Texas, and is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.

At once surreal and neoclassical, Lee-Smith’s masterful compositions reflect the social alienation of mid-20th-century America

Hughie Lee-Smith came of age in the midst of the Great Depression, spending his early life primarily between Cleveland and Detroit. The Midwest left an indelible impression on the artist, whose Social Realist paintings referenced its expansive gray skies and industrial architecture. Carnival imagery recurs throughout Lee-Smith’s work via the motifs of ribbons, pendants and balloons, often evoking the contrast between the carnival’s playful theatricality and its uncanny imitation of reality. He depicted abandoned, crumbling urban architecture as the sets for his existential tableaux, and even when his figures appear together, they always seem solitary. Over the course of his long career, Lee-Smith developed a distinct figurative vocabulary influenced by both Neoclassicism and Surrealism—the summation of a lifelong effort to see beyond the real.

This volume, published for a 2022 show at Karma, New York, surveys the artist's practice from 1938 to 1999, tracing his development from depictions of the Midwest to his years on the East Coast in the decades following World War II. It features writing by Hilton Als, Lauren Haynes, Steve Lock and Leslie King-Hammond, as well as a conversation between Reggie Burrows Hodges, LeRonn P. Brooks and Kellie Jones.

Hughie Lee-Smith (1915–99) was born in Eustis, Florida. Early in his career he was involved in several WPA projects, including Karamu House in Cleveland (the oldest running African American theater in the nation) and the Southside Community Art Center in Chicago, where he would cross paths with Charles White, Gordon Parks and Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, among others. Eventually teaching would take him to the East Coast, where he was artist in residence at Howard University in Washington, DC, and later an instructor at the Art Students League of New York. He died in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The ultimate backstage pass: a photographic inside look at the making of the pioneering hip hop documentary Rhyme & Reason

In the mid-1990s, documentary filmmaker Peter Spirer embarked on a three-year odyssey to create a realistic portrait of hip hop, interviewing over 80 artists. Spirer captured a seminal moment as the culture balanced on the cusp of the mainstream. As Ice-T comments in the introduction to the book, "Rhyme & Reason is one of the few films that was there to document us before hip hop truly exploded."
While filming, Spirer took stills using a medium-format Rolleiflex camera. These photographs form The Book of Rhyme & Reason. Spirer writes: "The Rollei allowed me to capture some amazing moments: Puffy getting a trim in his office while doing three tasks at once, Biggie opening record plaques on his couch, Ice-T and Mack 10 hanging with their homies, Heavy D at the barber, playing pool. There was the Jack The Rapper convention with Death Row making a statement, at a Disney World Hotel, that ended in chaos. There were magical moments such as Redman and Erick Sermon freestyling on the mic to amazed onlookers at a block party in Newark and watching Wu-Tang Clan chop it up on the block in Staten Island on a cold winter’s day before they exploded."
This coffee-table volume features over 130 of Spirer’s photographs from 1994 to 1997. As hip hop commemorates its 50th anniversary in 2023, it is particularly fitting that many of these images from this formative period are being published for the first time.
Peter Spirer (born 1963) is an Academy Award– and Emmy Award–nominated director and producer. His catalog of over 32 films includes Rhyme & Reason (1997), Tupac Shakur: Thug Angel, Life of an Outlaw (2002), the BEEF series (2003–5), Notorious B.I.G.: Bigger Than Life (2007) and The Legend of 420 (2017).

A decade of installation works from the filmmaker famed for An Oversimplification of Her Beauty and Random Acts of Flyness

This is the first publication on the genre-defying practice of American filmmaker Terence Nance (born 1982). Tracing his work in film, video, television, sound and performance from 2012 to 2022, the volume pays tribute to the community Nance cultivated in the heady days of early to mid 2000s Brooklyn. The role of community figures centrally in Nance’s work, as evinced through his frequent collaborations with friends and family. Discarding the conventions of cinema, Nance opts for narrative forms that stretch the bounds of temporality and embrace Black spiritual and ancestral practices; he regards his work as part of an ongoing lineage of artists who labor to make visible these influences.
Swarm highlights the interdisciplinary nature of Nance’s practice by focusing on his immersive environments—both old and new—many of which have been reconstructed from earlier films.

Dramatic, confrontational images of a country enduring inconceivable upheaval and disaster

Bruce Gilden first traveled to Haiti in 1984 for the famous Mardi Gras festivities. There he discovered an impoverished territory in the grip of numerous natural disasters but charged with a unique energy. True to form, Gilden immediately departed from the beaten track, choosing to roam the length and breadth of the island along serpentine paths that led him to meet people from the four corners of the island, and into situations that few would choose to encounter.
Gilden was to visit this country that he loves so much on 20 further occasions, tirelessly documenting the everyday lives of Haitians, their history and terrain. From vendors at the markets of major cities to its nightlife and funeral ceremonies, Gilden strives to take stock of Haitian culture and its rich visual diversity.
Images from the series were first published as a slim monograph by Dewi Lewis in 1996; the book won the European Publishers Award for Photography. Atelier EXB’s beautifully printed new volume greatly expands the series with previously unseen images comprising nearly half of the book.
Bruce Gilden (born 1946) has produced long and detailed photographic projects in New York, Haiti, France, Ireland, India, Russia, Japan, England and the US. He has published 28 monographs, among them, Facing New York (1992), Bleus (1994), Haiti (1996); After the Off (1999), Go (2000), Coney Island (2002), A Beautiful Catastrophe (2004), Foreclosures (2013), A Complete Examination of Middlesex (2014), Lost and Found (2019), Cherry Blossom (2021), Black Country (2022) and The Circuit (2022).

Self captures the community vibes of the New York City bodega in exuberantly chromatic paintings, sculptures and installations

Working across a range of mediums, including large-scale painting, printmaking, sculpture, collage and installation, Tschabalala Self’s (born 1990) exuberant and visually seductive artworks often focus on stories of urban life, the body and humanity to explore cultural attitudes toward race and gender.
Taking its title from the celebrated series of installations which culminated in a 2019 exhibition at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum, Bodega Run documents Self’s multiyear-long exploration of the bodega—corner-store fixtures of New York City neighborhoods—as both a gathering place for community and a microcosm of the shifting political and economic forces that impact the lives of city dwellers, particularly of Black and Latin descent.
In vibrant paintings, sculptures and dizzying immersive installations, Self captures the densely stocked shelves, neon signs and intermingling characters of the New York City bodega. This lavishly designed monograph reproduces works and photographs from throughout the Bodega Run series, alongside significant new texts that expand on the project and Self’s practice and a sewn-in zine insert with photographs of New York bodegas. Tschabalala Self: Bodega Run is an essential look at a defining series of artworks by one of the most exciting young artists working today.

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From Dawoud Bey and Lorna Simpson to Sondra Perry and Kerry James Marshall, a multiethnic group of artists explores what it means to be seen, not seen or erased in the world through formal experimentations with the figure

Going Dark brings together a multigenerational group of contemporary artists who engage the "semi-visible" figure—representations that are partially (or fully) obscured, including, in some cases, literally darkened—and suggests that the concept of going dark is a tool that has been used by artists for decades to probe enduring questions surrounding both the potential and the discontents of social visibility. Across mediums—painting, photography, sculpture, video and installation—Going Dark names, charts and makes meaning of the semi-visible figure, arguing for its significance in contemporary art as a genre of unique conceptual and formal power. More than 125 works in all of these mediums by more than 25 artists are featured.
Essays by such curators as Legacy Russell and Jordan Carter, and professor Abbe Schriber, among others, contextualize the histories that inspired these works. In addition, four award-winning poets and three acclaimed graphic designers have contributed works.
Artists include: American Artist, Kevin Beasley, Rebecca Belmore, Dawoud Bey, John Edmonds, Ellen Gallagher, David Hammons, Lyle Ashton Harris, Tomashi Jackson, Titus Kaphar, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Joiri Minaya, Sandra Mujinga, Chris Ofili, Sondra Perry, Farah Al Qasimi, Faith Ringgold, Doris Salcedo, Lorna Simpson, Sable Elyse Smith, Stephanie Syjuco, Hank Willis Thomas, WangShui, Carrie Mae Weems and Charles White.

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The Nameplate is a vibrant photographic celebration of nameplate jewelry featuring deeply personal stories and rich cultural contexts, collected by the creators of the Documenting the Nameplate project.

Nameplate jewelry comes in many shapes, styles, and sizes—from simple scripted pendants to bejeweled rings, belts, and bracelets with a first, last, and/or nickname. Like so many individuals who proudly wear nameplates, Marcel Rosa-Salas and Isabel Attyah Flower were first introduced to this storied jewelry during childhood. Their love of the style gradually blossomed into a wide-reaching research project, Documenting the Nameplate, through which they've spent years collecting photographs and testimonials from nameplate-wearers across the country and world.

Featuring essays and interviews from scholars and cultural figures, portraits by contemporary photographers, archival imagery, and a historical exploration into the multifaceted and often overlooked significance of nameplate jewelry, The Nameplate is a tribute to the people who make, wear, and cherish it.

Themes and motifs in the art of Kara Walker, from blackface to abjection, by a leading art historian

In 2002, Kara Walker was selected to represent the United States at the prestigious São Paulo Art Biennial. Curator Robert Hobbs wrote extended essays on her work for this exhibition, and also for her show later that year at the Kunstverein Hannover. Because these essays have not been distributed in the US and remain among the most in-depth and essential investigations of her work, Karma is now republishing them in this new clothbound volume.
Among the most celebrated artists of the past three decades, with over 93 solo exhibitions to her credit, including a major survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker is known for her tough, critical, provocative and highly imaginative representations of African Americans and whites reaching back to antebellum times. In his analysis, Hobbs looks at the five main sources of her art: blackface Americana, Harlequin romances, Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection, Stone Mountain’s racist tourist attraction and the minstrel tradition.

The artist’s most inspired works in one volume.

Jean-Michel Basquiat—artist and art world provocateur—took New York City by storm with his powerful and complex works that relentlessly engaged with charged sociopolitical issues, including race, police brutality, and structural inequity. In this important volume, devoted to an exhibition at the Brant Foundation in their newly opened Manhattan outpost featuring the artist’s key works, Basquiat’s art returns to its East Village roots, contextualized for the first time in decades in the very neighborhood that served as one of his greatest inspirations.

Dieter Buchhart, noted Basquiat scholar and curator, brings together one hundred of the artist’s most important works, focusing on the best examples of the many subjects that informed Basquiat’s work, from jazz, anatomy, sports figures, comics, classical literature, the African diaspora, and art history. The exhibition partially restages three of the artist’s critical early shows, including an exhibition of the artist’s paintings and drawings of heads at Robert Miller Gallery; his most important canvases from Gagosian Gallery’s 1982 show in Los Angeles; and Basquiat’s solo show at Fun Gallery in the East Village. Buchhart also considers in-depth the artist’s so-called stretcher bar paintings, in which the normally hidden wooden supports for stretched canvases are exposed, works that have yet to be explored at length by scholars. In so doing, Buchhart offers a critical assessment of the enduring importance and legacy of the artist’s work.

© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.

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New visions and possibilities for Black masculinity through the lenses of 28 international photographers

In Black Masculinities, clichés of Black identity and masculinity are deconstructed and remade with exhilarating flexibility and imagination through the lenses of 22 Black photographers from around the world. Deeply embedded in histories of slavery, racism and oppression, Black masculinity is often mediated as aggressive, hypersexual and violent. Here, Swiss author, artist and editor Joshua Amissah compiles work that contributes to a wider spectrum of Black masculinities. By doing so, he writes, "[the photographers] are also questioning the narratological function of race and gender in visual culture as a whole … the stereotyped entanglement of ‘Black identity’ and ‘masculinity’ is visually deconstructed, partly reproduced and, more importantly, charged with a new set of values."
Photographers include: Kemka Ajoku, Kwaku Alston, Namafu Amutse, Eric Asamoah, Nuits Balnéaires, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Braylen Dion, Kofi Duah, Yannis Davy Guibinga, Jabari Jacobs, Kelvin Konadu, Jude Lartey, Naomi Mukadi, Maganga Mwagogo, Lakin Ogunbanwo, Ruby Okoro, RogersOuma, Micha Serraf, Ngadi Smart, Isaac West, Jozef Wright, and Ussi’n Yala.

PRE-ORDER: On Sale Date: February 4, 2025

A major new publication looking at the rich history of photographic practice by Black female and non-binary artists from the late nineteenth century to the present day.

For decades, women have been overlooked in the cultural history of photography, especially Black female and genderfluid artists of African descent whose crucial contributions to this relatively young medium are often missing.

More than just a corrective, this stunning, image-led survey features up to one hundred artists and photographers from diverse cultural backgrounds, geographic locations, and genres. Readers will encounter the works of Florestine Perrault Collins—one of the few African American women working in photography at the beginning of the 20th century—and iconic imagery by pioneering artists such as Ming Smith and Carrie Mae Weems. The book will showcase the potent visual activism of Zanele Muholi, Lola Flash, Vanessa Charlot, Sheela Pree Bright, Rahima Gambo, and Aida Silvestri, as well as a constituency of creative practitioners working with performance and lens-based media such as Ayana V. Jackson, Nona Faustine, Atong Atem, Lebohang Kganye, Heather Agyepong, Silvia Rosi, and many others.

This carefully curated visual survey stands on its own as an impressive collection of portrait, fashion, documentary, critical fine art, and socially engaged global photography.

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‘Pieces of a Man’ brings together 25 years of street photographs by noted American photographer Jamel Shabazz.“Beginning in Brooklyn’s tight-knit neighborhoods, including his own, Jamel Shabazz captured a true reflection of people of color now revered as a form of social commentary.

His work resonates around the world because it is authentic. He has the authority to speak for us and yet he maintains genuine humility and respect for his people. From the streets of Brooklyn to Europe to Africa, Jamel’s work is inclusive and compassionate without imposing his views on how people should represent themselves. He gives his subjects control over their own image, and in that you see the dignity that he sees in them; turning everyday people into icons. While some celebrate an era or style, Jamel reminds us to celebrate the people, not just the image.”

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With pieces drawn from the extensive personal collection of Pharrell Williams, this is a stunning and unprecedented exploration of the “bling” in hip-hop culture and fashion.

Few recording artists have had a greater hand in incorporating the culture of hip-hop into contemporary luxury than Pharrell Williams. Collaborating with Louis Vuitton nearly two decades ago, Pharrell was the first to have his designs integrated into the haute joaillerie of the great maisons. His innovative team-ups continue through to the present day, most memorably with Tiffany and Chanel, and the watchmaker Richard Mille.

The most extravagant of these chains, rings, and pendants—crafted in precious metals and studded with gems—are as much a part of Pharrell’s musical performance as they are of his personal style. His designs, which include one-off pieces such as solid-gold cases for mobile phones and handheld game consoles, have been legendary for featuring iconography of Pharrell’s own brands, Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream.

This book was originally published with two different colored covers. Customers will be shipped either of the colors at random. 

Featured in the book are over 100 pieces, many of which he created in tandem with some of the most recognizable designers in the industry—such as Jacob & Co, Yoon & Verbal, and Lorraine Schwartz. With frequent collaborators such as NIGO® and Tyler the Creator, Pharrell discusses his role in the evolution of hip-hop jewelry, the processes involved in the creation of his one-of-a-kind custom pieces, and the state of connoisseurship in a growing market for the most extravagant of hip-hop collectibles.

Famed 60s sunshine pop band 5th Dimension’s LaMonte McLemore’s additional enduring legacy is that of a photographer, contributing a weekly column “Beauty of the Week” to the renowned publication of African American pop culture, JET. Here, for the first time, is his personal selection of the column’s glory era.

As a founding member and vocalist in the award-winning pop-soul group The 5th Dimension, LaMonte McLemore enjoyed enormous critical and commercial acclaim in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But arguably just as impactful, if not more so, was his career as a photographer cementing Black women and models in American media and cultural history.

McLemore freelanced for JET magazine for more than four decades, principally shooting for its “Beauty of the Week” feature, which encapsulated Black joy, style, and beauty. During this time, he photographed over 500 Black women, most of whom were not professional models. The section, in which a woman was featured in a swimsuit along with her name, place of residence, profession, hobbies, and interests, became one of the most popular among the magazine’s audiences, as it showcased the everyday beauty and elegance of Black women, contributing greatly to what has been called the “first form of social media” by acclaimed contemporary visual artist, Mickalene Thomas. This photographic output serves as a living document of everyday Black fashion and elegance.

Black Is Beautiful: JET Beauties of the Week compiles, for the first time, numerous photographs from McLemore’s “Beauty of the Week” shoots, including never-before-seen outtakes from those sessions. This dynamic coffee table book is a tribute to LaMonte McLemore’s talent and cultural impact, and is a celebration of Black women, Black beauty, and Black culture.

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Designed as a companion to the hugely successful monograph Noah Davis, this volume offers further insight into the impact and legacy of the revolutionary Los Angeles artist and activist.

“Embedding his dreams on canvas and in the community, visionary American artist Noah Davis created a mighty legacy.” — Rachel Willcock, ArtReview (2022)
 
Looking to literature, film, architecture, and art history, Noah Davis imbued his ethereal paintings with emotion and imagination. Muted colors, fantastic scenes, and blurred subjects create an intoxicating vision. Attuned to the power of his medium, Davis layered his paintings—figuratively and literally—using a unique dry paint application to depict quotidian life at an enigmatic, almost magical remove. Featuring sumptuous close-ups throughout, this important new book brings into focus the rich, painterly variety and luminous detail of Davis’s canvases. 
 
With a special focus on the groundbreaking Underground Museum, which Noah Davis co-founded with his wife, Karon Davis, Noah Davis: In Detail includes a special conversation, moderated by Helen Molesworth, between Fred Moten, Glenn Ligon, Thomas Lax, and Julie Mehretu. This renowned group of artists and thinkers share personal experiences of the powerful and emotional impact of The Underground Museum and its connection to the larger artistic environs of Los Angeles. Franklin Sirmans contributes a new essay and Lindsay Charlwood, a lifelong friend of Noah’s, authors a chronology of his life, contextualizing his artistic and social achievements.

Alexander Ghedi Weheliye traces R&B music’s continued relevance for Black life since the late 1970s, showing how it remains a thriving venue for the continued expression of Black thought and life and a primary archive of the contemporary moment.

In Feenin, Alexander Ghedi Weheliye traces R&B music’s continuing centrality in Black life since the late 1970s. Focusing on various musical production and reproduction technologies such as auto-tune and the materiality of the BlackFem singing voice, Weheliye counteracts the widespread popular and scholarly narratives of the genre’s decline and death. He shows how R&B remains a thriving venue for the expression of Black thought and life and a primary archive of the contemporary moment. Among other topics, Weheliye discusses the post-disco evolution of house music in Chicago and techno in Detroit, Prince and David Bowie in relation to the appropriations of Blackness and Euro-whiteness in the 1980s, how the BlackFem voice functions as a repository of Black knowledge, the methods contemporary R&B musicians use to bring attention to Black Lives Matter, and the ways vocal distortion technologies such as the vocoder demonstrate Black music’s relevance to discussions of humanism and posthumanism. Ultimately, Feenin represents Weheliye’s capacious thinking about R&B as the site through which to think through questions of Blackness, technology, history, humanity, community, diaspora, and nationhood.

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Deana Lawson is one of the most powerful photographers of her generation. Her subject is black expressive culture and her canvas is the African Diaspora. Over the last ten years, she has created a visionary language to describe black identities, through intimate portraiture and striking accounts of ceremonies and rituals.Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph features forty beautifully reproduced photographs, an essay by the acclaimed writer Zadie Smith, and an extensive interview with the filmmaker Arthur Jafa.

Deana Lawson is one of the most intriguing photographers of her generation. Over the last ten years, she has created a visionary language to describe identities through intimate portraiture and striking accounts of ceremonies and rituals. Using medium- and large-format cameras, Lawson works with models she meets in the United States and on travels in the Caribbean and Africa to construct arresting, highly structured, and deliberately theatrical scenes animated by an exquisite range of color and attention to surprising details: bedding and furniture in domestic interiors or lush plants in Edenic gardens. The body—often nude—is central. Throughout her work, which invites comparison to the photography of Diane Arbus, Jeff Wall, and Carrie Mae Weems, Lawson seeks to portray the personal and the powerful in black life. Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph features forty beautifully reproduced photographs, an essay by the acclaimed writer Zadie Smith, and an expansive conversation with the filmmaker Arthur Jafa.

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