AS IF Magazine Interviews Antwaun Sargent

CULTURE

ANTWAUN SARGENT ON THE NEW BLACK VANGUARD: PHOTOGRAPHY BETWEEN ART AND FASHION

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

WORDS

by KRISTOPHER FRASER

PHOTOS

COURTESY of VARIOUS

It has taken decades, but black fashion photographers are finally getting their due. In his latest book, The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion, curator and critic Antwaun Sargent has explored the next generation of black fashion photographers on the rise, and how they are not only shaping the cultural zeitgeist within the black fashion community, but the global fashion community as a whole. The international community of black fashion photographers has made the black body seen as universal, and needless to say, it was about time.

Sargent is young, gifted, and black. His take on how the needle is moving in the fashion industry was one of the most refreshing I’d ever heard. Fashion is changing, and in many ways for the better. I caught up with the writer one rainy morning over the phone as he reminded me these photographers are our future.

Campbell Addy, Adut Akech, 2019, © Campbell Addy

Nadine Ijewere, Untitled,

2019; from The New Black

Vanguard (Aperture 2019),© Nadine Ijewere

AS IF: Talk to me about how the idea for this book initially came about?

Antwaun Sargent: I have been sitting the last couple of years thinking about this group of photographers who really kind of make their own way and share their images across social media, magazines, and museums. When Aperture approached me about doing a photography book and asked me what it would be, it was just kind of a no brainer to really think about what’s new and next in photography, and to get a platform for the ideas of this generation of photographers.

So how did you go about curating the photographers for the book?

I wanted to kind of make sure what was communicated visually was this movement that I called “The New Black Vanguard”, which is really focused on a diverse group of concerns, and so I wanted that to come through in the images. I think it’s important to know that this book is really an introduction and a starting point. I kind of did six different books at the same time, with the same kind of theme, and have totally different photographers in them. It’s important to highlight that. It really gets to the point of saying there’s a lot of photographers creating the space, and it's a book that has certain kinds of economic considerations. We decided on 15 photographers, so this group of photographers represents the larger percent. It was also important for me to have a group of photographers who aesthetically and conceptually thought about connections to the history within photography and within the black community. There is also a sense of fantasy and creation in the space of each of their photographs that was central to the idea of art and photography. Those are just a few of the ideas that guided the selection of these 15 photographers.

So, talk to me about what the term “The New Black Vanguard” means? I’m trying to get an idea of what someone looking at the title of this book should get from that term.

What’s important in the titling of the book is the word new because I think it suggest the past…a rich history that has kind of existed since the advent of photography, of black photographers, and black image makers using the camera to put forth their own ideas around of what photography is and what photography can be. It suggests that these photographers, who are very much making in this generation are part of a long, rich history that should not be forgotten. When often thinking about a new movement or a future we don’t consider the past, and so for me the title is a way to stand in the present, while we look at the past as a possibility to create a future.

Now, fashion photography and art have always been considered two very separate mediums. For the longest, both those things were overwhelmingly white or male or both. How does this book challenge both those notions help rewrite that history?

For a very long time there was a kind of separation between church and state with the term fashion photography and art photography, but overtime what you’ve seen is people creating in a way that borrows from each of those genres. I think that because of the way we often thought of fashion photography as illegal or in some ways unimportant there was economic concern, or intellectual concern that pushed this notion that they have nothing to do with each other, when in fact they’ve always inspired each other. Again, it kind of goes back to the advent of the media, the way that people dress, and the way that people present themselves essential to what we call representation. What we see in everyone’s photographs from Diane Arbus to Mickalene Thomas, to the photographers who were creating this book like Awol Erizku, Tyler Mitchel, and Nadine Ijewere is a more honest conversation about photography and how fashion has always been a part of a medium that was first about documentation and then quickly moved to what became known as pictorialism. I just wanted to make sure that we were having a robust conversation about what we mean when we say representation and how you have these really established quote on quote art photographers shooting the cover of magazines. For example, take Carrie Mae Weems, who shot the cover of W with Mary J. Blige. For Carrie Mae, self-representation has always been important to her images, and so what’s important is to think about fashion in more expanded sense, in a way that kind of deals with someone having the freedom and having the tools to create what they want to see. For me, the book in some ways is a challenge to this notion that art and fashion photography are separate. The book is a testament to the way that this generation is creating.