About Rashod Taylor
Rashod Taylor’s photographs are deeply rooted to photographic traditions and break new ground. Intimacy and honesty speak to an under-addressed chapter of the United States: the Black American experience, particularly the relationship between father and son.
Little Black Boy, 2020
Rashod Taylor’s Little Black Boy series is at once common and radical. Taylor’s is attached to analog photographic practice- the large format camera, the slowing down and honoring of the moment, and the attraction to rich the lush prints first produced from his home darkroom. All such factors underline his sentimentality, thoughtfulness, and ally him to the history of family portraiture while adding to its legacy- its future. The artist, whose work was introduced to our platform via our You and Yours exhibition, intends to engage this series as a long-form collaborative project, begun in 2018 and to be continued until LJ, his son, reaches adolescence or terminates the endeavor. New works to release annually. (More about the collaborative nature of the project: Taylor in MFAH permanent collection). Taylor follows in a line of such family portraiture influences as Sally Mann, Nicholas Nixon, Gordon Parks, Larry Sultan, and Carrie Mae Weems. While Taylor nods at such inspirations, he creates a path of his own. Scenes in Taylor’s Little Black Boy photographs are often ubiquitous, their depiction on the other hand has not been.
Little Black Boy, 2021
The power of Taylor’s work is in nuance. We experience the Little Black Boy images in layered ways, indeed becoming swept up by the flood of our own emotions. We connect first through a colloquial nature- our families have photographs like these, memories of our own come to mind of living room forts or backyard BBQ’s in suburban America. But a quiet tension sews through the frames when it leaves the realm of the personal to intersect with the world. Taylor attunes our attention to the space where complexities generated by the trespasses seeded in our nation’s history even before its founding intersect mainstream American Culture, or the cannon of art history for that matter. Loaded context raised by such tender intimacy is likely what earned Taylor’s work the honor of the 2021 Arnold Newman Award for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture. A 2023 article in Black & White Magazine lends insight into the sublet sensibilities of this artist.
Little Black Boy 2022
Little Black Boy 2023
We feel the weight of this legacy through the eyes of our careful narrator emerge as harmonizing compassion for the son, the family, the greater unfolding story among stories. Taylor’s work achieves a clear connection, profound continuum, and grand optimism. This is one of many families navigating the contemporary American landscape yet riddled by racism, racial inequity, and social injustice. A space where the difficulties and trials of youth, fatherhood, and everyday life are compounded by the residual wounds of the past that can neither be forgotten nor resolved, only faced and felt-through.
As we watch and witness this evolution of father and son, we too can allow cognizance of this unfolding personal narrative to infuse and inform our own sensibilities. In this space, Taylor lets us engage with eyes that may listen.
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