Deana Lawson

Deana Lawson (1979, born in Rochester, New York) is an American artist, educator and photographer whose work revolves primarily around issues of intimacy, family, spirituality, sexuality, and Black aesthetics. Lawson has been praised for her ability to communicate the nuances of African American experiences in relation to issues of social, political, and economic factors. Her photographs have been exhibited in a number of museums and galleries including the Museum of Modern Art,Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. She is based out of Brooklyn, New York.

Lawson was born in 1979 in Rochester, New York. She received her B.F.A, in 2001 in Photography from Pennsylvania State University, and her M.F.A. in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004. Lawson has one child with her former husband, artist Aaron Gilbert. Lawson has said to have been influenced by Gilbert's artwork, and much of Gilbert's early artwork depicts of the family including Lawson and their child.

Since 2012, Lawson is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. She has also taught at California Institute of the Arts, International Center for Photography, California College of the Arts, and Rhode Island School of Design.

Lawson credits her interest in taking photographs to African American photographers like Carrie Mae Weems and Renee Cox. During her undergraduate years, Lawson was shocked at the lack of scholarship surrounding photographers of color. This led her to learn more about black artists, like Lorna Simpson, whose work inspired her to pursue photography as a medium: “Just to have that model--to realize that not only did I like to make pictures but that I could actually do this, you know, was absolutely important to reaffirm myself as an artist”.

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