The first monograph by theNew Black Vanguard‘s Arielle Bobb-Willis is a vivid statement about color, gesture, and style.

Keep the Kid Alive, Arielle Bobb-Willis’s first book, invites audiences into a brightly imaginative world, filled with dynamic colors, gestures, and unusual poses of the artist’s own creation. Transforming the streets of New Orleans, New York, and Los Angeles into lush backdrops for her wonderfully surreal tableaus, Bobb-Willis makes unforgettable images that expand the genres of fashion and art photography. “I love the idea of seeing Black people represented in an abstract way,” Bobb-Willis says. “It’s important to me to continue to reject the notion that Black expression is limited–or limiting.” With a conversation between Bobb-Willis and a dynamic range of artists, stylists, and creatives who speak about keeping their “inner kid” alive, this book captures a definitive young artist’s unconventional worldbuilding.

Tiana Reidis an assistant professor of English at York University. Her research and teaching interests include black literature, gender, and labor. Her writing has appeared inAmerican Quarterly,Art in America,Bookforum,Frieze,The Nation,The New York Review of Books,The New York Times, andThe Paris Review, among other places. She is a former editor atThe New InquiryandPinko. In 2021, she received her PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Nicole Achaempongis the digital editor atT Magazine. A former editor atApertureand theAtlantic, her writing has appeared inArt in Americaand theNew York Review of Books.
Arielle Bobb-Willis(born in New York, 1994) has published her photography in theNew Yorker,I-D,W Magazine,British Journal of Photography,L’uomo Vogue, New York magazine’sThe Cut, and theNew York TimesMagazine. Her work is featured inThe New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion(Aperture, 2019) and an accompanying exhibition, which traveled to the Museum of the African Diaspora, Rencontres d’Arles, Fotografiska Sweden, and other venues. She is currently based in Los Angeles.

• Publisher:Aperture
• Publish Date: October 08, 2024
• Pages: 160
• Language: English
• Type: Hardcover
• EAN/UPC: 9781597115704
• BISAC Categories: Women Artists, Individual Photographers – Monographs, Subjects & Themes – Portraits & Selfies