Antonio McAfee’s work addresses the complexity of representation. Through appropriating and manipulating portraits, he engages in prescribed views of individuals, and reworks images to provide an alternate – more layered image and concept of the people depicted. His photographs oscillate between formal considerations (modifying appearances and prints) and imaginary potential (establishing new back stories and roles) for the portraits.
The source of the artist’s current portraits (Counter-Archive Project) is The Exhibition of American Negroes organized by W.E.B. Du Bois, Thomas Calloway, and Historic Black Colleges for the Paris 1900 International Exposition. The exhibition was a photographic, economic, and legislative survey of middle-class blacks in Georgia.
About the Artist:
Antonio McAfee is a photographer raised and based in Baltimore, MD. He received his BFA in Fine Art Photography from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. He received a Post-Graduate Diploma in Art, in the Arts and Culture Management from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa).
Recent exhibition venues include Walters Art Museum, Kreeger Museum, Academy Art Museum, University of Maryland, and Baltimore County’s Albin O. Kuhn Special Collections Gallery.
Antonio is an Artist in Residence at VisArts (Rockville, MD) and Wesley Theological Seminary (Washington, D.C.). McAfee is a professor at Towson University, Loyola University Maryland, Maryland Institute College of Art, and American University.
Learn More
