The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion by curator and critic Antwaun Sargent, and published by Aperture, features 15 black photographers, among them Nadine Ijewere, Dana Scruggs and Stephen Tayo, who have formed an informal movement to convey images of black beauty and identity as a form of social justice.

"We think about identity as being fixed," Sargent told WNYC's cultural critic Rebecca Carroll. "And that's because we've naturalized these narratives surrounding beauty, surrounding what is conventional. So I think that the images in the book help to problematize those kinds of notions."

The book explores and expands the visual narrative on beauty and identity in mainstream culture, but also on ideas specific to gender. "Often in the space of photography, fashion and art, the images you are seeing are produced by men," said Sargent. "And so one of the things that was so interesting to me about this movement of photographers is that there are as many women shooting as men, and kind of making their concerns known." While surely a mark of progress regarding gender equality in art and opportunity, with progress comes visibility, and with visibility comes the probability of cultural appropriation — something black artists in particular have been fighting back against for decades. Sargent says, though, there are ways to protect against appropriation.  

"One thing you can do is make sure [artists] get credit, making sure that we are archiving and creating books and awareness around these photographers," he said. "In this book, you have 15 photographers with really distinct styles of shooting, and now you know where that comes from."  

Sargent, whose writing has appeared in The New York Times and The New Yorker, among other publications, said black curators and creatives before him had worked to make space for him and others. "One of the things that made this book easier for me was the scholarship of Deb Willis Thomas, people like Thelma Golden, bell hooks, who thought so beautifully about the family picture, and the way our grandmothers and mothers create these meticulously organized shrines to our families on the walls of living rooms." 

Never far from view, Sargent said, is the weight images of black families and people always carry. "For a long time black people were not allowed in magazines, were not allowed in museums," he said. "And so we made our own." 

WNYC's cultural critic Rebecca Carroll will be in conversation with Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of The Studio Museum, along with Rujeko Hockley, assistant curator at the Whitney Museum, at The Greene Space on October 7. And on December 10, Carroll will continue her conversation with Sargent. Both events are part of Carroll's Black Icons of Art series.