Monsen Photography Lecture: Deana Lawson

Join us for our annual Monsen Photography Lecture, featuring distinguished artist Deana Lawson, followed by a reception with the artist.
Lecture: 6-7 PM
Reception: 7-8:30 PM

Deana Lawson will discuss the development of her artistic practice and the ideas that have guided her work over the past ten years. The lecture will reflect on her approach to portraiture, collaboration with her subjects, and the layered histories and intimacies that inform her images.

Deana Lawson (b. 1979, Rochester, NY, lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and Brooklyn, NY) creates photographs that result from collaborations with strangers whom she encounters by chance or deliberately seeks out. The pictures often depict richly textured domestic scenes in which the details of decor, lighting, and pose are constructed. In this way, Lawson draws on the legacies of historical portraiture, documentary photography, and the family album, but transcends these traditions, constructing images that merge lived experience with imagined narratives. The aesthetics of intergenerational connectivity guide Lawson’s choice of subject matter, with each of her works taking its place in an overarching project that coheres into what she terms “an ever-expanding mythological extended family.” Lawson’s works also demonstrate a special attention to the element of light, as both part of the mechanical process by which photographs are realized, and as a manifestation of the divinity that suffuses her sitters.
A focused presentation of Lawson’s work on the Henry’s mezzanine features photographs that highlight her ongoing exploration of female subjectivity through the photographic image.

Deana Lawson (b. 1979, Rochester, NY, lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and Brooklyn, NY) makes photographs that explore the Black familiar and its relationship to lore, global histories, and mystery traditions. She transforms observational picture-making into a powerful mode of expression, critique, and celebration. Romance and intimacy between subjects, as well as ritual and spirituality appear throughout Lawson’s work, often within the same image. Her photographs emphasize formal approaches to film commonly associated with both Western and African twentieth-century portraiture practices, in addition to appropriation and uses of vernacular imagery. Lawson engages her subjects with intention and intuition alike, in staged situations characterized by the piercing directness of the model’s gaze. With their meticulous mise-en-scènes filled with personal artifacts and decor, these portraits underscore the psychological connections between people and their domestic spaces, fusing biography, symbolism, and cultural observation, and creating expansive images of contemporary personhood.

Lawson was the subject of a survey exhibition co-organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and MoMA PS1, Queens, New York, which also traveled to the High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2021–2023). Other solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at institutions including Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, France (2025); Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2021); Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2020); Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2019); Underground Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2018); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2018); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO (2017); and Art Institute of Chicago, IL (2015). Her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Tate Modern, London, England; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, France; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; and Art Institute of Chicago, IL. Lawson lives and works in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.

Accessibility

The Henry strives to be a welcoming and accessible space for all visitors. Assisted Listening Devices (ALDs) and AI live captions will be available. For additional accessibility information, please visit henryart.org/visit/accessibility or contact Museum Services at 206.221.3850 or [email protected] with questions or needs.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Henry Art Gallery