News

Johanna Fateman

D’Angelo Lovell Williams

The New Yorker

4/15/2019

The young photographer’s intimate, improvised surrealism makes for images as jarring as they are elegant. In one deadpan double portrait, a long string of red chewing gum connects the mouths of the artist and his mother as he rests his head in her lap. Another, titled “A Day Apart,” shows two figures merged into a single pregnant silhouette; one has ducked beneath the shiny white dress worn by the other, a serious young man smoking a cigarette at the edge of dark woods. In the sunny “Hieroglyph I,” the arched backs and clasped hands of two male nudes form a graceful rune as they stand, butt to butt, in a field. Although there is a slapstick undercurrent to each of these lovely scenes, their shared motif—emotional connection—is depicted with poetic sincerity.