September 13 – November 15, 2014

Opening reception: Saturday, September 13, 2014, 6-8 pm

Lora Reynolds is pleased to announce After Tears, a project-room exhibition of photographs by Wayne Lawrence. This is the artist’s first presentation at Lora Reynolds Gallery.

The pictures in After Tears are mostly of young black men from South Africa, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Rio de Janeiro. Each subject—in front of a shanty, on a beach, in a crop field—looks straight into the camera. Two boys embrace, a pair of muscular young men pose, a lone adolescent gazes softly out at the viewer: each of these pictures is the result of a conversation—a connection—Lawrence had with a stranger. He says hello, listens to their stories, tries to understand what he can of their lives, and makes a portrait about their pride, generosity, and vulnerabilities.

Lawrence describes these photographs as a personal journey through the diverse communities across the globe that have their roots in Africa—communities torn apart by slavery, genocide, and colonialism. Lawrence’s photographs highlight the common origin, humanity, struggles, and inexhaustible perseverance of the people of the African diaspora.

After Tears takes its name from a contemporary South African ceremony held after the death of a loved one, marking the end of the mourning period and celebrating the life of the deceased. Analogously, making photographs is Lawrence’s response to what he describes as the most traumatic experience of his life—losing his brother. David Lawrence was murdered in Saint Kitts in 2002. Lawrence memorializes his brother by creating images that celebrate their dispersed community, its history, and the powerful bonds between its far-flung members.

Wayne Lawrence, born in 1974 in Saint Kitts, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Lawrence has had solo exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the FLAG Art Foundation (New York), and Amerika Haus (Munich). In 2013 he won the Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture and the Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship. In 2012 the International Photography Awards named him a Photographer of the Year. His work has been published by periodicals including the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, TIME, Newsweek, and Mother Jones.