The High Museum of Art recently presented the Deana Lawson Exhibition to the public to give visual art lovers a different approach to photography and art.
Lawson is an award-winning artist, educator and photographer who carefully stages each photo she takes to create a story. Her intention is to promote Black love, intimacy, family, relationships, and more through her art. She gives a different outlook on popular culture in hopes to change the narrative of what we see daily. Her photography has a sense of contemporary art to provoke viewers to take close examination of story she is telling.
Rolling out spoke with the assistant curator of photography at the High Museum, Maria Kelly, who was able to share more of the process behind Lawson’s work and how she is contributing to the culture.
“Lawson is one of the most exciting artists working today. She is bridging that gap between contemporary art and photography. She has also won a couple of awards recently including the Hugo Boss Prize and the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, which is the [most prestigious] contemporary photography prize. So she’s just very [appreciative] of this moment and it’s exciting. I think that’s why it’s important to have her here because she is really important, doing important work, and being talked about right now. The work itself is striking and I think anyone that has seen it online has felt like it’s striking, but I think seeing it in person is an entirely different experience. Like seeing the scale of the works, I think that the subjects are looking at you usually and you can’t just look at the work and not feel like you’re also being seen,” Kelly said.
