Wide Iron

Wide Iron is one in a series of photographs paying homage to the Jacob Lawrence's classic 1943 painting The Ironers. I have been obsessed with that painting for years, how it conveys the subjects' struggles and strengths in abstract color blocks and stylized forms interact. My photographs contemplate what has and hasn't changed in the almost a century since then, exploring race, history, and an every-woman in America.

As in Lawrence’s painting, a woman presses a red and yellow garment with an abstract iron made of flattened shapes, here, a two-dimensional cut-out. In this image, the white model’s body itself has been painted with the patterns and colors of Lawrence's painting.