The photographs of Deana Lawson explore the relationship of Blackness to collective memory, intimacy, spirituality, and twentieth-century portraiture traditions. Born and raised in Rochester, New York, to a large family, Lawson learned about photography from her father, who worked at Xerox. His family photo albums would later form an important piece of her own practice. As an undergraduate, she channeled her creative impulses into her own artwork and chose to pursue a career in the fine arts.

Drawing on the work of artists like Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and James Van Der Zee, Lawson’s staged, large-scale portraits depict individuals, couples, and families in domestic and public spaces. She casts, directs, and dresses her subjects, many of whom she has only met moments before photographing them. The sharp gaze of her sitters invites the viewer into a constructed yet familiar universe, underscoring how individuals hold space for themselves within the shifting terrains of social, capital, and ecological systems. Objects—family trinkets, food containers, toys, bibles—offer glimpses into the interiority of her subjects. Each work is a carefully constructed portrait that combines truth and fiction. Imbuing the quotidian with a sense of glamour, Lawson uses the sitters’ gaze to ensure that the power of the image rests with the subject, not the viewer. She sees her images as collaborations, regularly inviting her sitters to openings to see the work that they produced together.

Lawson received her BFA from Pennsylvania State University and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013. She was the first photographer to be awarded the Hugo Boss Prize, administered by the Guggenheim Museum, in 2020. Her work has been featured at the Studio Museum in group exhibitions such as Harlem Postcards Fall/Winter 2010–11 (2010) and Black Cowboy (2016).