The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is thrilled to invite the Baltimore community and beyond into a conversation around art and fashion photography in ways that break down long-established boundaries.

This month, join curator Antwaun Sargent and MICA alum Faith Couch ’19 (Photography BFA), along with moderator and the College’s Interim Vice Provost Colette Veasey-Cullors ’96 (Photography MFA), for a webinar as they discuss the international traveling exhibition “The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art to Fashion.” 

The exhibition, which features selected works from fifteen groundbreaking contemporary photographers, is currently on view for MICA’s on-campus community in Fox Building’s Meyerhoff Gallery. It is organized by Aperture, New York, and is made possible, in part, by Airbnb Magazine.

These photographers’ work have been widely consumed in traditional lifestyle magazines, ad campaigns, and museums, as well as on their individual social-media channels, reinfusing the contemporary visual vocabulary around beauty and the body with new vitality and substance.

“MICA’s approach to ‘The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion’ exhibition differs from other iterations of the exhibition in that we, as an educational institution, made a conscious decision to prioritize our mission to EMPOWER students by centering their voices through every aspect of our programming,” Veasey-Cullors said. “This prioritization includes a two student-produced video walk through of the exhibition, student-developed questions that were used to create the discussion between the exhibition curator, Antwaun Sargent and MICA Photography alumna and New Black Vanguard artist Faith Couch, as well as the integration of the exhibitions themes and content within a multiplicity of class content. I see this as an opportunity to not only provide our students with a global and progressive exhibition, but to also partner with them in activating their experience in multiple ways.”

The work in this exhibition fuses the genres of art and fashion photography in ways that break down long-established boundaries — and open conversations around the roles of the Black body and Black lives as subject matter.

Seeking to challenge the idea that blackness is homogenous, the works serve as a form of visual activism. The results — often made in collaboration with Black stylists and fashion designers—present new perspectives on the medium of photography and the notions of race and beauty, gender and power.

“As the exhibition continues to travel across the world, I am excited for the local conversations it will inspire,” Sargent said. “It is my hope that the MICA run will foster great conversations with the student body about the power of photography to speak to the everyday.”

About the Curator
Antwaun Sargent is a writer, editor and curator living in New York City. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, New Yorker, and various art and museum publications. Sargent is author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion (Aperture, 2019) and editor of Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists (2020). He is also a director at Gagosian Gallery.

Involved Photographers:
Photographs by Campbell Addy, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Micaiah Carter, Awol Erizku, Nadine Ijewere, Quil Lemons, Namsa Leuba, Renell Medrano, Tyler Mitchell, Jamal Nxedlana, Daniel Obasi, Ruth Ossai, Adrienne Raquel, Dana Scruggs and Stephen Tayo.

This exhibition also includes a salon-wall of photographs by: Lawrence Agyei, Daveed Baptiste, Faith Couch, Yannis Davy Guibinga, Delphine Diallo, Rhea Dillon, Justin French, Erica Génécé, Denzel Golatt, Travis Gumbs, Texas Isaiah, Seye Isikalu, Adama Jalloh, Manny Jefferson, Joshua Kissi, Myles Loftin, Ronan Mckenzie, Tyra Mitchell, Travys Owen, Lucie Rox, Makeda Sandford, Cécile Smetana Baudier, Isaac West and Joshua Woods.

For more information about the exhibition and event, click here.