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64 THE NEW BLACK VANGUARD Photography between Art and Fashion 28 October – 22 January Saatchi Gallery, London The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion is an extension of the exhibition and publication at Aperture Gallery of the same title in New York in 2019. Curated by Antwaun Sargent the exhibition and publication make the claim of gathering together photographers that constitute a loose global collective with work that, in the words of Sargent, ‘powerfully centres identity, community and desire.’ The exhibition and publication has a strong focus on international fashion and portraiture, with work made across the U.S.A., the UK, Nigeria and South Africa – with the vast majority of the images exhibited having been published in fashion or lifestyle magazines. The show demonstrates the importance of locating Black creativity outside the cloisters of fine art; subjectivity and self-fashioning, practices most often explored through style and fashion, are foregrounded here as key drivers. The project is contextualised in the publication by a powerful essay by Sargent and more loosely in the exhibition by a set of four vitrines that gather together images of Black creativity within popular magazines; from the past and the extremely active public output by Black creatives in the present. The first vitrine brings in archival Life, Ebony, and Jet magazines alongside the street-style documents of Jamel Shabazz and the studio portraits of Malick Sidibé. The second vitrine gathers more recent publications, one of the most significant being the landmark issue of September 2018 US Vogue where the front cover, shot by Tyler Mitchell, is the first Vogue cover shot by a Black photographer. This is a key object to understand the importance of the show, as whilst there have been, for the last few decades, a number of Black models who have been the muse for fashion’s lens, there has not been the same widespread recognition of Black photographers within the fashion industry and fashion publishing. The show, as exhibited within the Saatchi Gallery, consists of six rooms; with three rooms given over to the main photographers, a corridor room with monitors showing interviews with the curator and some of the photographers, a screening room of moving image work by a number of the photographers (ranging from short adverts to music videos to longer experimental documentaries), and a final room of a new commission that brings in photographers who were not in the initial exhibition and publication. The first room concentrates on work by Campbell Addy, Awol Erizku, Tyler Mitchell and Nadine Installation view by Justin Piperger. Ebute Metta, Lagos, Nigeria (2018) Ruth Ossai Ijewere. This room’s images – which range from shoots for i-D to still lives published in Artforum – are framed by some key principles: Addy is a key organiser and editor, supporting creative practices with his Niijournal project, Mitchell has blazed a trail in terms of establishing Black photographers in mainstream publications and Ijewere’s work explicitly attempts a recalibration of beauty standards. The title of one of Ijewere’s images Joy as an Act of Resistance could stand as an alternative subtitle for the show as there is a remarkable and strategic absence of pain or negativity throughout the exhibition as a whole. Such absence seems a conscious critical decision, shifting the possible registers of Black experience away from focussing on what artist Parker Bright named ‘Black Death Spectacle’ in his infamous intervention at the 2017 Whitney Biennial. The second room has a more obvious theme of identity and desire throughout. Ruth Ossai’s playful and dazzling portraits draw on a history of studio portraiture from the African continent, with the influence of Sidibé and Seydou Keïta apparent. Ossai’s exhibition statement opens with the words ‘the beauty of photography is it starts a dialogue about who we are, where we come from and where we are going,’ something that opens up
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exhibitions 65 New Orleans (2018) Arielle Bobb-Willis Johannesburg (2019) Jamal Nxedlana questions of who we are as a photography community within contemporary global conditions. The work of Quil Lemons and Daniel Obasi are paired together, quietly exploring vulnerability and artificiality through portraits of queer masculinity in Nigeria and in the United States. Dana Scruggs’ studies of strong black male bodies, with a female gaze that presents the human form without objectification. In the third room there is an act of curatorial generosity and community building as a great number of other photographers are included alongside the main photographers to further build the sense of a set of community whilst demonstrating the scale of creative conversation around the show’s themes. The work of Namsa Leuba, Jamal Nxedlana and Arielle Bobb-Willis conclude this room with more experimental and sculptural methods, with Bobb-Willis’ ‘anti-selfies’ as a set of performances within mundane local neighbourhood settings. The show is strongly framed around the notion of a reposing and rethinking of Blackness outside of a notion of Whiteness as the ‘neutral’ point of reference. Whiteness as the neutral aesthetic background is symbolically banished as the walls are painted colours including shades of blue, pink, yellow and brown. This is registered by Sargent in his video interview where he states the desire to challenge Blackness as constituted by the White imagination, citing Erizku’s claim ‘I am trying to create a new vernacular – Black art as universal.’ This exhibition and publication is a recognition and promotion of a set of photographers whose work is committed to existing in a public realm whilst foregrounding and exploring the representation of Black experience. Aware of the power of performances of identity in front of the camera, Sargent, in his essay, notes that Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave and abolitionist activist, ‘pioneered the use of the image to capture his sharp sense of style and gravitas… Douglass’s conscious use of the camera as a tool of self-invention is a concept that became a central part of Black image making.’ Aware of the possible negativity of images Sargent’s essay and curated project presents an explicitly optimistic tone, exploring the difficult question of beauty and the ways in which it can manifest, whilst extensively grappling with the existential complexity of imaging Blackness. As a resource for those exploring Black creative practices in photography, fashion, and selffashioning, this project is an excellent contribution to the field. — Francis Summers

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64

THE NEW BLACK

VANGUARD Photography between

Art and Fashion

28 October – 22 January Saatchi Gallery, London

The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion is an extension of the exhibition and publication at Aperture Gallery of the same title in New York in 2019. Curated by Antwaun Sargent the exhibition and publication make the claim of gathering together photographers that constitute a loose global collective with work that, in the words of Sargent, ‘powerfully centres identity, community and desire.’ The exhibition and publication has a strong focus on international fashion and portraiture, with work made across the U.S.A., the UK, Nigeria and South Africa – with the vast majority of the images exhibited having been published in fashion or lifestyle magazines. The show demonstrates the importance of locating Black creativity outside the cloisters of fine art; subjectivity and self-fashioning, practices most often explored through style and fashion, are foregrounded here as key drivers. The project is contextualised in the publication by a powerful essay by Sargent and more loosely in the exhibition by a set of four vitrines that gather together images of Black creativity within popular magazines; from the past and the extremely active public output by Black creatives in the present. The first vitrine brings in archival Life, Ebony, and Jet magazines alongside the street-style documents of Jamel Shabazz and the studio portraits of Malick Sidibé. The second vitrine gathers more recent publications, one of the most significant being the landmark issue of September 2018 US Vogue where the front cover, shot by Tyler Mitchell, is the first Vogue cover shot by a Black photographer. This is a key object to understand the importance of the show, as whilst there have been, for the last few decades, a number of Black models who have been the muse for fashion’s lens, there has not been the same widespread recognition of Black photographers within the fashion industry and fashion publishing. The show, as exhibited within the Saatchi Gallery, consists of six rooms; with three rooms given over to the main photographers, a corridor room with monitors showing interviews with the curator and some of the photographers, a screening room of moving image work by a number of the photographers (ranging from short adverts to music videos to longer experimental documentaries), and a final room of a new commission that brings in photographers who were not in the initial exhibition and publication. The first room concentrates on work by Campbell Addy, Awol Erizku, Tyler Mitchell and Nadine

Installation view by Justin Piperger.

Ebute Metta, Lagos, Nigeria (2018) Ruth Ossai

Ijewere. This room’s images – which range from shoots for i-D to still lives published in Artforum – are framed by some key principles: Addy is a key organiser and editor, supporting creative practices with his Niijournal project, Mitchell has blazed a trail in terms of establishing Black photographers in mainstream publications and Ijewere’s work explicitly attempts a recalibration of beauty standards. The title of one of Ijewere’s images Joy as an Act of Resistance could stand as an alternative subtitle for the show as there is a remarkable and strategic absence of pain or negativity throughout the exhibition as a whole. Such absence seems a conscious critical decision, shifting the possible registers of Black experience away from focussing on what artist Parker Bright named ‘Black Death Spectacle’ in his infamous intervention at the 2017 Whitney Biennial. The second room has a more obvious theme of identity and desire throughout. Ruth Ossai’s playful and dazzling portraits draw on a history of studio portraiture from the African continent, with the influence of Sidibé and Seydou Keïta apparent. Ossai’s exhibition statement opens with the words ‘the beauty of photography is it starts a dialogue about who we are, where we come from and where we are going,’ something that opens up

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