Kehinde Wiley has expanded his media to include photography in a new book being put out by Brooklyn-based publisher Powerhouse entitled Black Light: Photographs by Kehinde Wiley. More than just a play on words, the manipulation of light was central to the project’s theme. From the introduction by Krista A. Thompson:
For his first photographic series, the artist invited young black men to pose for him in his studio, where he basked them in a bright and luminous light. His studio was especially equipped for the Black Light series with visual technologies that “blasted out,” as Wiley describes it, “a super rapturous light,” reminiscent of the dazzling shine of Hype Williams’ Hip Hop music videos. The resultant photographic prints present viewers with young black men in a brilliant light that appears to burnish their brown skins and to highlight their facial features. Light, in particular, draws viewers to their eyes, which emit a halo of white light and reflect the source of their illumination. A crisp white light also accentuates the contours of the models’ lips, making them appear simultaneously angelic and sensual, imbuing them with the soft aura of Pierre and Gilles’ photographs. If Hammons immerses his subjects in a cavernous darkness to get them to see their own constitutive role in the social construction of blackness, Wiley floods his studio space with light to highlight how this seeming source of illumination hinders certain forms of perception. Light blinds viewers to constructions of whiteness and eclipses its role in the visual production of power in painting and photography.
