Ashley McLean
Seeking you in other bodies…
2023 En Foco Fellowship Exhibition
Oct 3 - Nov 2, 2024
Seeking you in other bodies… investigates my relationship with masculinity and the male figures in my life. The foundation of my practice is the unceasing care and tenderness I signify with the people I photograph. There's a duplexity of rendering freedom and purity of the Black males I photograph while working through my personal history dealing with an absentee father. The exploration of the landscape takes on an overwhelming presence, and isolation underlines the essence of the bodies that formerly took on stereotypical burdens.
I'm considering the reclamation of the Black male persona and what visual capacity they represent. There is an accentuation of the body (while working with the formality of portraiture), a haptic representation of fatherhood, and engagement with nature that settles in the middle of the sublime and realism, with an aim to hold a moment in time that is both tender and mundane.
At the heart of this quest for serenity and truth, lies the aim of healing the wounds from a childhood marked by longing.
Ashley McLean (American, b. 1996, she/her/hers) is an artist based in New York City. She received her B.F.A. in Photography and Video from the School of Visual Arts and briefly studied in the Fine Arts program at the Universität der Künste Berlin in 2021.
McLean renders her subjects through photography with a deep sense of tenderness and sensitivity, highlighting their connection to the natural world. Her work explores themes of masculinity, Black identity, and subjectivity. She has exhibited both domestically and internationally, including in the 2022 Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents group showcase.
In 2023, she was honored as one of the recipients for the Creator Labs Photo Fund from Aperture Foundation and Google Pixel.
Currently, McLean is pursuing an MFA in Visual Arts at Columbia University.
En Foco, Inc. is a non-profit that supports U.S. based photographers of African, Asian, Latino, Native American, and Pacific Islander heritage. Founded in 1974, En Foco makes their work visible to the art world, yet remains accessible to under-served communities. Through exhibitions, workshops, events, and publications, it provides professional recognition, honoraria, and assistance to photographers as they grow into different stages of their careers.