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Art
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Photography#DNA
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#portraitsJuly 10, 2020
Grace EbertThomas Jefferson, by Rembrandt Peale, 1800. Shannon LaNier, Jefferson’s sixth-great grandson. All images © Drew Gardner, shared with permission
To prepare for a recent portrait, Shannon LaNier pulled a black coat over his head and wrapped a thick, layered collar around his neck, a costume to match what Thomas Jefferson wore in an iconic 18th-century painting. The Houston news anchor was participating in an ongoing series by British photographer Drew Gardner that recreates photographs, paintings, and other images of historical figures by styling their descendants in similar garb. LaNier’s photograph is particularly significant, though, because he’s the sixth-great grandson of Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, who the third U.S. president enslaved and forced to bear his children, a story that’s long been left out of historical narratives.
Titled The Descendants, the project is a visual excavation of Western history that questions what remains after generations pass. The relatives of historically significant people are, for the most part, out of the spotlight, but as the photographer notes, their ancestors’ “DNA is walking down the street.”Irina Guicciardini Strozzi, the 15th great granddaughter of Lisa del Giocondo. The Mona Lisa by Leonardo DaVinci
The project began about 15 years ago when Gardner’s mother mentioned that he resembled his grandfather. Although the current project has diverged from simple likeness—the photographer notes that similar features are not a requirement when searching for descendants—he hopes to inspire questions about people’s legacies. “I am not saying they look like their forebears,” he notes. “I’m encouraging a debate. I want to provoke a conversation that makes people curious about history.” Since its inception, he’s photographed relatives of Frederick Douglass, Lisa del Giocondo, Berthe Morisot, and Napoleon.
Gardner’s criteria for choosing subjects is strict: the historical figure must be widely known to the public and have made a significant impact that goes beyond simple celebrity. The next step involves tracking down paintings, photographs, and other realistic representations of the person, which eliminates a considerable number of prospects—originally, Gardner hoped to recreate an image of Pocahontas but soon realized that only a woodcut existed. The photographer then searches for living family members, sometimes working through more than a dozen generations to find someone within 15 years of age of the forebear. Often with the help of museums and other institutions dedicated to historical preservation, he contacts the relative to ask if they’ll pose for a portrait.Frederick Douglass. Kenneth Morris, Douglass’s third-great grandson.
To maintain the integrity of the original image, the costumes and props are vintage, when possible. Some elements, though, like the massive, rusted chains forming the backdrop of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s portrait from 1857, don’t exist anymore. When the authentic items aren’t available, Gardner recreates them in physical or digital form.
For LaNier’s portrait, though, the situation was different. While he is dressed similarly to Jefferson, he diverges because he chose to forgo the wig his sixth-great grandfather wore. “I didn’t want to become Jefferson,” he told Smithsonian Magazine. The result is a striking set of portraits that explore historical truths. “Jefferson may have been a founding father, but I am an image of what his family has now become,” LaNier says in an interview about the experience. “You look at my family and you see every color in there, as you will see from many family’s that have come from slavery.”
Although the pandemic has changed his immediate plans for upcoming recreations, Gardner is hoping to release more pieces in 2021, which you can follow on Instagram. For those interested in a behind-the-scenes look at his process, Smithsonian Magazine has released videos of the Douglass, Jefferson, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton shoots.Lucie Rouart, great granddaughter of Morisot. Berthe Morisot, by Edouard Manet, 1872
Isambard Thomas, Brunel’s thrid-great grandson. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, portrait by Robert Howlett, 1857, © National Portrait Gallery
Gerald Charles Dickens, Dickens’ great, great grandson. Charles Dickens, portrait by Herbert Watkins, 1858, © National Portrait Gallery
Tom Wonter, Wordsworth’s fourth-great grandson. William Wordsworth, portrait by William Shuter, 1798, © Cornell University
Helen Pankhurst, Pankhurst’s great granddaughter. Emeline Pankhurst, women’s rights activist.
Hugo de Salis, fourth-great grandson of Napoleon. Napoleon in his study, by Jacques-Louis David, 1812, © National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.#DNA
#family
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More“Girl with Butterflies” (2024), silk and wool yarn on muslin warp, 50 x 40 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Claire Oliver Gallery, shared with permission
Regal Portraits Evoke Myth and Power in Simone Elizabeth Saunders’ Hand-Tufted Textiles
March 12, 2025
ArtCraft
Kate Mothes
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Emblazoned with vibrant patterns and words like “TRUTH” and “LOVE,” Simone Elizabeth Saunders explores Black identity in relation to kinship, power, and survival. Her hand-tufted textiles (previously) merge cultural narratives and history with mythology, nostalgia, and personal experiences.
Saunders predominantly focuses on women, who she portrays in bold portraits and within fantastical, empowering scenarios. In recent works like “Girl with Butterflies” and “She Manifests Her Destiny,” figures embrace and commune with totem-like snakes, insects, and plants.
“She Reveals” (2022), hand-tufted velvet, acrylic, and wool yarn on rug warp, 65 x 60.5 x 1 inches
Rooted in the myriad histories of the global Black diaspora and rich textile traditions throughout countless cultures, Saunders employs a craft technique historically relegated to a role “beneath” fine art in order to turn the tables on how we comprehend influence, identity, and artistic expression.
Saunders is represented by Claire Oliver Gallery, and you can explore more work on the artist’s Instagram.
“(Be)Longing IV” (2023), hand-tufted acrylic, cotton, wool, and metallic yarn on cotton rug warp, 20 x 1 x 30 inches
“Girl with Hummingbirds” (2024), silk and wool yarn on muslin warp, 50 x 40 inches
“Internal Reflections” (2022), hand-tufted velvet, acrylic, and wool yarn on rug warp, 66 x 62.5 x 1 inches
“(Be)Longing VIII” (2024), hand-tufted acrylic, cotton, wool, and metallic yarn on cotton rug warp, 20 x 1 x 30 inches
“Release in Darkness” (2022), hand-tufted velvet and acrylic yarn on muslin warp, 66 x 55 inches
“She Manifests Her Destiny” (2024), silk and wool yarn on textile backing, 50 x 40 inches
“Break Away at Dawn” (2023), hand-tufted velvet, acrylic, and wool yarn on muslin warp, 66 x 56 x 1 inches
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A patron saw the beauty in graffiti when most of the world thought it was mere nuisance. Now the writing (of Lee Quiñones, Rammellzee, Futura and others) is on the museum wall.Martin Wong got in with the graffiti writers in the early 1980s at Pearl Paint, the long-gone Canal Street art supply store, where he had a job in the canvas department. Wong would slip them markers or cans of spray paint or sell them supplies on deep, unsanctioned discounts, which endeared him to artists at crucial moments of their careers. The painter Lee Quiñones recalls Wong writing out $20 invoices for portrait-quality linens priced at $400.Wong soon began buying Quiñones’s work and that of like-minded painters like Daze, Sharp and A-One — artists who were moving away from bombing trains with graffiti and developing studio practices. In so doing, he nurtured their development and became a constructive patron: a Cosimo de’ Medici of the aerosol set. His collection is highlighted in “Above Ground,” a small but essential exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.By 1994 Wong had amassed upward of 300 artworks and other media, all of which he donated to the museum that year. As interest in both the modern graffiti movement and its diasporic reverberations has grown, Wong’s conviction has proved consequential, his collection functioning as a repository. Pieces from it have been lent to major institutional surveys, like “Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation” at the MFA Boston and “Art in the Streets” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, shows that have deepened scholarship of this previously maligned and misunderstood period.Outsiders had been hot on graffiti at the same time as Wong was, but none had a more ardent or abiding interest. He recognized what was an irreducible form of American expressionism and its importance in the history of New York, even as much of the city was hostile toward it.Wong was 32 when he arrived in New York from San Francisco in 1978 and was drawn immediately to the baroque layers of tags spreading across the city’s surfaces. Wong’s own art, an urban realism that synthesized documentarian detail and romantic devotion (no artist lavished more attention on bricks), had little technical overlap but shared a sympathetic kinship. His paintings referred to the street, and so invariably referred to graffiti too. He reproduced the Lower East Side’s tagged handball courts and crumbling redbrick tenement buildings as oppressive but softened, bathed in a dingy cast that can feel like ecstatic reverie.From left, Wicked Gary, a graffiti writer; Peter Broda, the director of the Museum of American Graffiti; Martin Wong, the collector; and Lazar, a graffiti writer, at the opening of the Museum of American Graffiti in 1989. Behind them is a collection of 1970s writers’ tags.via Museum of the City of New YorkWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
