“...Central to Tawny Chatmon’s work is the celebration of Black childhood, Black resistance and self-determination, and she often uses her own family members as models. While her studio practice is based in photography, Chatmon intensifies her works through meticulous manual processes, intricate staging and digital manipulation. Chatmon at times embellishes her prints with hand-applied acrylic paint, semiprecious stones, beads, thread and other materials. She frames her portraits in gilded antique or contemporary baroque-style frames. These interventions give Chatmon’s subjects a gravitas that often belies their youth and confronts the absence, exclusion and devaluation of the Black body in Western art..."
