📸For Your 👀 Only:

A Conversation with Antwaun Sargent

Addy Campbell

If you haven't heard of curator and critic Antwaun Sargent, you are missing out on one of the most brilliant contemporary voices on photography. Sargent just joined the Gagosian gallery as director and curator, one year after his first book, The New Black Vanguard, took the photo world by storm. It's been highly recommended since its release last year, and has become an instant classic by highlighting the complex and personal ways that photographers grapple with art and identity in the art and fashion worlds.

WHAT IS YOUR ORIGIN STORY?

I did not study art. I studied theory and history at Georgetown, and then after that, I moved to New York and took a job teaching with Teach for America in East New York, so I did that for two years, and taught literacy.

I took a fellowship at BuzzFeed, and after that I started freelancing. I wanted to write about art, and at the time, BuzzFeed didn't offer that. While I was working this job as a teacher, I met one of my dear friends who at the time was the digital director of the Guggenheim. She would take me to openings and artist studios and such, and I fell in love with artists. I was like, I have to figure out something to do in this world if I’m going to be in it.

I particularly wanted to write about Black artists and artists from my community. At the time — this was 2011, 2012 — there was just not a lot of interest. You had some names that broke through but it was few and far between, unlike now when you have a real sort of perspective on art-making in Black communities and you see that in the press, in exhibitions, and certainly online.

I got the opportunity to curate an exhibition for Aperture Foundation. It was 2018 and it was the first time that I had ever thought about curating. We did this really lovely show of young photographers getting their take on society in that moment. Shortly after that, Aperture invited me to propose a book. I had just seen a new generation of photographers working in this in-between space between art and fashion who were thinking about commercial images of Black communities, Black people, and expressing that through the camera with ideas of power and desire and presentation.

Awol Erizku

CAN YOU TALK A BIT MORE ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF THE NEW BLACK VANGUARD?

I had put Tyler Mitchell in that [Aperture] show, and I think that was his first exhibition. Shortly after that show, he shot what would become the historic cover [of Beyoncé] for Vogue.

You have this young photographer who is clearly interested in fashion and is also interested in the history of Black portraiture and those things are being fused on the cover of Vogue magazine, which is arguably one of the biggest platforms in photography. So I found that interesting.

Seeing other photographers pop up in my feed like Quil Lemons and Daniel Bosse and Stephen Tayo, I was like this is a movement; they are all working to expand the available images of Blackness. We often will celebrate young white artists, but we don’t often celebrate young Black artists and take their concerns seriously and put those concerns in books, so I thought it was a real opportunity to do that.

I think part of the reason that the book has resonated so well with people is because these young photographers are really at the precipice of change, and unabashedly showing Blackness and diversity and multiplicity. From one portfolio to the next in the book, you don’t get a similar type of image — these image-makers have really distinct styles and concerns. People have really longed to see themselves reflected in all the nuances that they know to be true within their communities.

Because this is the first book like this, it's become a resource for photo editors, fashion companies, and photo agents looking to expand their rosters, which I love, and which I didn't expect. These are all places that have been a part of the problem in the past — I want to be very clear about that — and there is a shift that is happening now in our visual culture, in part of the photographers in this book who have brought their demands and said we’re going to chart a new way.

Adrienne Raquel

One of the big misconceptions that we often tell ourselves about big institutions is that one day they wake up, and they just change, and that's not true. People make demands on those institutions. These photographers used the technology available to them, largely social media, building audiences, making images, creating their own exhibitions and magazines and platforms to show that "this is our work — we’re going to take ourselves seriously until they can't ignore us." They advocated for themselves, and now because of that advocacy, we have a very different idea of what beauty is, what power is, what desire is, what sexuality is. That's what this generation of photographers, white and Black, are doing. That is what photography can do, it can help shift our notions of who we are, and what we can be.

I feel really lucky to have been in a moment and in a position to do a book like this. There was a need for it. A lot of times we contextualize Blackness in the moment, and not look back or forward, just sort of say, This is what’s happening right here, and that often gives the perception that we are without a history. I wanted to make sure that the privilege of our history was showing, and those histories were being engaged in this contemporary moment and work.

WHAT WILL REPLACE THIS BOOK?

I want this book to age gracefully.

The legacy of this book is still young; we’re only a year in. There are still exhibitions traveling around the world for the next four years. For each exhibition we’re adding new voices, new photographers — it's very much a living exhibition. My hope is that more and more Black photographers make their concerns known as that insures that there is a visual culture and space that is authored by Black thinkers and artists. That is important because for so long we have not had control of our images.