Black Divinities: Race, God, and Nation in the Photography of Deana Lawson

In recent years the Brooklyn-based photographer Deana Lawson (born 1979) has become rightly famous for her rapturous yet grounded large-sized photographs of everyday black people--those she meets in her neighborhood, as well as on her travels to Brazil, Jamaica, and the Congo. In this seminar we will look closely at Lawson's photographs, considering how she gains her subjects' trust, how she uses props and locations, how she explores her own feelings and the legacies and possibilities of being black.