Brooklyn Photo-Based Artist Deana Lawson Comes to Lafayette College, 2/27

Photo-based artist Deana Lawson will visit Lafayette College from Feb. 27 through March 4 as an artist-in-residence working on the creation of her own work. She will meet with advanced art students, art classes and give an artist talk at 4:10 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 28 in the Williams Center for the Arts, room 108.

The talk is free and open to the public.

Lawson's work focuses on the psychological, personal, political and historical experiences that are expressed through the body. Lawson is a recipient of the 2008-09 Aaron Siskind Fellowship Grant and a NYFA Grant in 2006. Publications include Time Out NY, Contact Sheet, and Photography Quarterly. Lawson's work has been exhibited widely, and she has held artist residencies at Light Work and Visual Studies Workshop.

Lawson refers to the subjects of her photographs as "her family." Although she is not related to them by blood-in fact, they are nearly all strangers-the pictures are remarkably intimate. Lawson composes almost every element, often sketching scenes out on paper before working with the camera. Reflecting Western and African portraiture conventions, Lawson says her works examine "the body's ability to channel personal and social histories, drawing on the various formal and informal languages of the medium and its archival capabilities."

The result is a collection of body compositions portraying humans' limitless variety.

Lawson's residency is part of Lafayette's Third Street Artist-In-Residence Program, which is funded by Amy Smith and the AKS Foundation.

Lawson currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

For more information, contact Karina Skvirsky, assistant professor of art at Lafayette, (610) 330-5826, skvirskk(at)lafayette(dot)edu.