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Photography Monographs

Arielle Bobb-Willis: Keep the Kid Alive

photographs by Arielle Bobb-Willis

text by Tiana Reid

interviewer Nicole Achaempong

contributions by Micaiah Carter, Esther Faciane, Phyllis Galembo, Kezia Harrell, Alex Webb, Howardena Pindell, Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, Aweng Chuol, Leonardo Scotti, Isabella Lalonde, Synchrodogs, Tschabalala Self, Hannah Traore & Spencer Tunick

designed by Rush Jackson

Publisher
Aperture
Initial publish date
Oct 2024
Category
Monographs, Fashion, Women Artists, Portraits
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781597115704
    Publish Date
    Oct 2024
    List Price
    $60.00 USD

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Description

The first monograph by the New Black Vanguard’s Arielle Bobb-Willis is a vivid statement about color, gesture, and style.

Keep the Kid Alive, Arielle Bobb-Willis’s first book, invites audiences into a brightly imaginative world, filled with dynamic colors, gestures, and unusual poses of the artist’s own creation. Transforming the streets of New Orleans, New York, and Los Angeles into lush backdrops for her wonderfully surreal tableaus, Bobb-Willis makes unforgettable images that expand the genres of fashion and art photography. “I love the idea of seeing Black people represented in an abstract way,” Bobb-Willis says. “It’s important to me to continue to reject the notion that Black expression is limited—or limiting.” With a conversation between Bobb-Willis and a dynamic range of artists, stylists, and creatives who speak about keeping their “inner kid” alive, this book captures a definitive young artist’s unconventional worldbuilding.

About the authors

Arielle Bobb-Willis (born in New York, 1994) has published her photography in the New Yorker, I-D, W Magazine, British Journal of Photography, L’uomo Vogue, New York magazine’s The Cut, and the New York Times Magazine. Her work is featured in The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion (Aperture, 2019) and an accompanying exhibition, which traveled to the Museum of the African Diaspora, Rencontres d’Arles, Fotografiska Sweden, and other venues. She is currently based in Los Angeles.

Arielle Bobb-Willis' profile page

Tiana Reid is an assistant professor of English at York University. Her research and teaching interests include black literature, gender, and labor. Her writing has appeared in American Quarterly, Art in America, Bookforum, Frieze, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Paris Review, among other places. She is a former editor at The New Inquiry and Pinko. In 2021, she received her PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Tiana Reid's profile page

Nicole Achaempong is the digital editor at T Magazine. A former editor at Aperture and the Atlantic, her writing has appeared in Art in America and the New York Review of Books.

Nicole Achaempong's profile page

Micaiah Carter's profile page

Esther Faciane's profile page

Phyllis Galembo's profile page

Kezia Harrell's profile page

Alex Webb's profile page

Howardena Pindell's profile page

Gabriella Karefa-Johnson's profile page

Aweng Chuol's profile page

Leonardo Scotti's profile page

Isabella Lalonde's profile page

Synchrodogs' profile page

Tschabalala Self's profile page

Hannah Traore's profile page

Spencer Tunick's profile page

Rush Jackson's profile page