THE photographer plays a large part in making choices that affect the fashion pictures they take: what kind of camera and lighting to use, type of lens, location, background, props and accessories and so on. There are also decisions to make about who to photograph and this involves a host of considerations that include ethnicity, celebrity status and budget.
It was not until the autumn of 2018 that an African-American was commissioned to shoot the cover of a hugely influential magazine like American Vogue and January 2019 when Nadine Ijewere became the first Black photographer to do likewise for British Vogue. Such pathbreaking provides the context for The New Black Vanguard, a celebration of black photographers and black models.
The book looks at the work of 15 photographers and is generously illustrated to bear testimony to the diverse talents of the artists. What they have in common is an awareness that one of them, Dana Scruggs, gives voice to, “The fact that I’m a black woman capturing black men is very important to me, because often black people and black narratives are captured by white people –sometimes through culture-vulturing initiatives or to depict poverty porn or to fetishise us.”
Photograph: Dana Scruggs
Dana Scruggs hails from Chicago and came to be recognised after years of posting her work on multiple platforms. “Every moment that I didn’t give in, pack up”, she says, has been crucial to her success.
When a fashion photographer’s heritage is a mixed one, Swiss-Guinean in the case of Namsa Leuba, there is space to explore and represent notions of beauty and glamour from more than one perspective. In her series The African Queens, Leuba does this by using exotica familiar from western depictions of Africa to imbue her models with expressions of the imaginary and mysterious. She is inspired, she says, “by my origins and by new creative exchanges, infusing reality with my own sensitivities and experiences.”
Photograph: Namsa Leuba
Campbell Addy, born in London in 1993, works in the studio and on the street to produce portraits that aim to inspire young people with a sense of confidence and power. His photograph of the model Jason Harderwijk, first published in 2017, is a good example of his approach while other shots in The New Black Vanguard showcase his ability to look at Africa in a recognisable Western style and his models’ attire often reference traditional African garments.
Photograph: Campbell Addy
Group portraits, staged and sometimes spontaneous ones, are a characteristic of Stephen Tayo’s work in the capital of the country where he was born. He captures the contemporary youth style of Lagos with his photograph of six young men posing for the camera on a street in the city. His work has appeared in Vogue and the New York Times and his solo exhibition in Lagos in 2019 focused on Nigerian twins and their esteemed status in Yoruba culture.
Photography Stephen Tayo
It is not unusual for someone’s interest in taking pictures to be sparked when someone gifts them a camera and they start using it for the first time. This is what happened to New Yorker Arielle Bobb-Willis when she was 13 and living in South Carolina. An unhappy teenager, she photographed parts of her body in her bedroom and came to use the camera as a way to lift herself out of depression. Her fashion figures, wearing the brightest of clothes but often with their faces obscured in the picture, hint at unresolved issues. They come, she declares, “from a place of discovery through loss” and describes her work as “anti-selfies”.
Photography Arielle Bobb-Willis
Fashion photography, a visual barometer for beauty and glamour, is like the weather in that what it records changes over time. And just as climate change is affected by human decisions and policies, representations of what counts as beautiful or glamorous is subject to cultural and social attitudes and, sometimes, prejudices.
The artists featured in this book are aware of their role in shaking up the barometer, treading new paths by having their photographs appear in prestigious magazines and newspapers.
Photograph: Awol Erizku
Awol Erizku, born in Ethiopa’s capital, Addis Ababa, raised in New York’s “Bronx, can produce fashionable images of black celebrities like Beyoncé while at the same time portray an Ethiopian sex worker as a modern Venus and produce a hairstyle series using friends from the Bronx.”
His statement that he is trying to create a new vernacular – black art as universal’ could serve as a manifesto for all the photographers whose work makes up The New Black Vanguard.
by Sean Sheehan
The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion, edited by Antwaun Sargent, is published by Aperture