Lewis Watts
Artist Omiiroo Nyeusi in Oakland, 2019/2021

Archival pigment print, 18 x 12 inches
Edition 3/10, signed, verso
Unframed
Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery
Estimated value: $2,600

This is part of a portrait series that I have been working on of Black creatives, activists, and others who are comfortable in their own skin. I am drawn to folks who do not let prescribed negative notions from media effect how they think of themselves and how they present themselves to the world. I am also interested in how context helps form the narrative.

I was interested in this image of artist Omiiroo Nyeusi in his studio and how the objects that surround him in the photograph say something about the concerns that he addresses in his work and who he is. I’m looking for moments when these kinds of concerns come together as well as the energy that happens between my subjects and myself as we encounter each other.

About the Artist:
Lewis Watts

Lewis Watts is a photographer, archivist/curator, and professor emeritus of art at UC Santa Cruz. His research and artwork center around the “cultural landscape” primarily in communities in the African diaspora. He is the author of Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era (Chronicle Books, 2006; Heyday Books, 2020; New Orleans Suite: Music and Culture in Transition (UC Press, 2013); and Portraits (Edition One Press, 2020).

His work has been exhibited at and is in the collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Cité de la Musique, Paris; Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; Oakland Museum of California; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; Amistad Center for Art and Culture, Hartford, CT; Light Work, Syracuse, NY; Paul Sack Collection, San Francisco; Autograph, London; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene; The McEvoy Foundation, San Francisco; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany; and San Francisco Camerawork; among others.

Website: renabranstengallery.com
Instagram: @lwattsjr | @renabranstengallery