Tawny Chatmon (b. 1979, Tokyo, Japan) is a self-taught artist based in Maryland. Through a layered process of photography, painting, and hand-embellishment, she creates works that honor and celebrate the beauty of Black childhood and the Black family, while at times confronting historical misrepresentation and erasure. As a Black woman and mother of three, she is driven by a desire to leave something meaningful behind for her children and the world they will inherit and believes that our experiences and early influences shape who we become, noting that "what we are exposed to, what we are taught, and even the toys we play with as children" contribute significantly to who we become in adulthood. 

 

After more than a decade in commercial and editorial photography, in 2010, her outlook and relationship with her camera shifted when she began photographing her father’s battle with cancer, consequently documenting the disease unexpectedly taking his life. With her father’s passing, she gradually began to look to her camera less as a device for monetary gain and more as a way for her work to serve a higher vocation.

 

While the camera remains her primary tool of communication, she takes a multi-layered approach to her process, moving beyond traditional photography without adherence to convention. She became more widely recognized for her gold gilded portraits of Black children and families, drawing inspiration from Byzantine iconography and Gustav Klimt’s “Golden Phase.” Embracing gold’s historical role as a symbol of sacredness, she positioned her subjects as precious and valuable.

 

As her work has evolved, so have her materials. Becoming increasingly aware of the unethical and brutal mining practices tied to materials such as cobalt—which powers much of the technology we rely on—and gold, particularly in regions like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she made the intentional decision to step away from using genuine gold in her work. Her current process includes the use of gold-toned pigments and paints, beads, intricate embroidery, thread, shell, porcelain, glass, and other mixed media to articulate her message. In parallel with this material shift, Chatmon has expanded her practice to include deeper research-based work, assemblage, and film. These extensions of her process allow her to further explore the narratives at the heart of her work.

 

Chatmon's work has received both national and international recognition. In 2018, she was named Photographer of the Year and People Photographer of the Year by the International Photo Awards, along with multiple first-place honors in professional categories. That same year, she received recognition from the Prix de la Photographie in Paris and the Fine Art Photography Awards. In 2022, she was one of eight African American artists featured in The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined, a collateral exhibition of the Venice Biennale curated by Myrtis Bedolla of Galerie Myrtis. The exhibition was presented as part of the Personal Structures art fair and explored the continuum of Black life across imagined futures.

 

Her work is held in both private and public collections. Select notable public collections include the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Microsoft Corporate Collection in Reston, Virginia, the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art, and the Aaron and Lillie Straus Foundation.