Daria wades in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool during the 2020 March on Washington. Washington, D.C.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS IN-PERSON EVENT IS AT CAPACITY. ONLY REGISTERED GUESTS WILL BE ADMITTED. TO RECEIVE A LINK TO THE VIRTUAL STREAM, FOLLOW THE RSVP BUTTON BELOW , CLICK "RESERVE A SPOT" AND SELECT "RSVP - VIRTUAL STREAM"
Magnum Foundation invites you to a panel and book signing celebrating We Are Present: 2020 in Portraits, the debut monograph by Magnum Foundation grantee Laylah Amatullah Barrayn. Taking viewers through one of the most dynamic years in recent history, We Are Present is a year-long visual account of love, grief, vulnerability, creativity, isolation, communion, determination and faith.
The event will feature Barrayn in conversation with Dr. Deborah Willis, University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Their discussion will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. Books will be available for purchase on site. Those unable to make the event can also order books online.
Wednesday, February 1, 2023 | 6:30 - 8 PM
59 East 4th St, 7W | New York, NY 10003
This will be a hybrid event, and both in-person and virtual tickets are available for RSVP. The zoom link will be sent to registered virtual attendees ahead of the event.
Magnum Foundation is in an elevator building and has a restroom that is wheelchair accessible and gender-neutral. For access requests or questions, please contact info@magnumfoundation.org. As a small team, we will better be able to respond to requests made at least one week in advance.
Masks are currently appreciated, but not required. We may provide additional instructions ahead of the event.
We Are Present: 2020 in Portraits is a year-long visual account of love, grief, vulnerability, creativity, isolation, communion, determination and faith braided within its narrative. Taking us through one of the most dynamic years in recent history, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn has assembled a series of tender yet confrontational portraits from her assignment work as a photojournalist and off-duty encounters. Photographed on location in New York, Minneapolis and Louisville, the images are linked chronologically, beginning in the unassuming winter months, transitioning into the devastating onset of a global pandemic in the spring, pivoting into a summer of spirited Black Lives Matter demonstrations, before meandering into a volatile fall election season. The portraits in We Are Present distill the intimacy at play between sitter and photographer echoing the quieter stories adjacent to the main events of 2020.
We Are Present: 2020 in Portraits was produced with the support of the Magnum Foundation.
Image credit: Barnabas Crosby
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn is a documentary photographer and the co-author of the anthology MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. Documenting for over 20 years, Barrayn’s work is featured frequently in the New York Times, Vogue, National Geographic, and NPR among other publications. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions at The Museum of the African Diaspora San Francisco and The Taubman Museum of Art (VA). Her photography is included in Black: A Celebration of a Culture edited by Dr. Deborah Willis, Photography, A Feminist History by Emma Lewis and Streams of Consciousness: Bamako Encounters—African Biennale of Photography edited by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung among other books. In 2018, she was included as one of the Royal Photographic Society’s (UK) Hundred Heroines. She is currently completing a book on contemporary Black photographers.
Image credit: Laylah Barrayn
Deborah Willis, Ph.D., is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She is also the director of NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture. Her research examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, contemporary women photographers and beauty. She is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship and is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She has received awards from the College Art Association for Writing Art History in 2021, the Outstanding Service Award from the Royal Photographic Society in the UK and the 2022 Don Tyson Prize for the Advancement of American Art. She is the author of The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship and Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, among others. Professor Willis’s curated exhibitions include: "Home: Reimagining Interiority" at YoungArts, Miami, "Framing Moments in the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts," "Migrations and Meanings in Art", and "Free at they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory" at FotoFocus 2022. Most recently, Dr. Willis was named the 2023 Mary Lucille Dauray Artist-in-Residence by the Norton Museum of Art.