Janna Ireland Artist Talk with Charlie Wiley (video 1:01:13)
Janna Ireland
American, 1985-
Hillside Memorial Park, Number 1, 2019
archival pigment print
24 × 36 in.
SBMA, Museum Purchase, Eric A. Skipsey Acquisition Fund
2021.5.1
Janna Ireland - undated photo
"I photographed my first Paul Revere Williams buildings in December 2016, the same month it was announced that he had been posthumously awarded the 2017 AIA Gold Medal. During his lifetime, Williams was the first Black architect to achieve many things. Now, almost 40 years after his death, here was another." - Janna Ireland
COMMENTS
Since 2016, per a recommendation by Los Angeles architect Barbara Bestor, artist and photographer Janna Ireland has been documenting the work of Paul Revere Williams (1894–1980), a fellow Angeleno and the most prominent Black architect of the mid-20th century.
Her first foray into architectural photography, the acclaimed series furthers Ireland's visual exploration of Black life. Her lyrical black-and-white images emphasize the simple, yet elegant details that define Williams' buildings, from the sinuous curving staircases, to curves in the ceilings, to the angled confluence where walls meet. More than a book of architectural photographs, Regarding Paul R. Williams is the result of one artist’s encounter with another, connecting across different generations within the same city.
In 2020, the Los Angeles County Art Museum (LACMA) Decorative Arts and Design Acquisitions Committee selected 23 photographs from Ireland's archives for the museum's permanent collection, including photographs from her Paul R. Williams series.
Ireland completed a BFA from the Department of Photography and Imaging at NYU (2007) and an MFA from UCLA (2013). Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and she is the 2013 recipient of the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Snider Prize. She has been published in Aperture, Harper’s, Art Papers, Vice, and the Los Angeles Times.
https://www.charityauctionstoday.com/auctions/modernism-week-19663/items/315411
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
Janna Ireland has been commissioned by Woodbury University in Los Angeles to create an ongoing photographic interpretation of the buildings by the major 20th century Los Angeles African-American architect, Paul Revere Williams (1894-1980). As a Black artist herself, Ireland has spoken of the importance of Williams in overcoming racist barriers to create a career in the visual arts: he was the first Black architect to be certified west of the Mississippi and to become a member of the American Institute of Architects. Creating many iconic buildings in Southern California, Williams was nonetheless unable to live in the neighborhoods where he designed numerous homes for Hollywood stars due to racist housing covenants. The subject of these three photographs is Williams’s 1941 Hillside Memorial Park, a large cemetery complex for LA’s Jewish community. In a true meeting of architecture and photographer, Ireland perceptively captures Williams’s talent in firmly yet serenely — and in this case reverently — placing solid modernist forms within the evanescent elements of light and space.
- The Lens of Architecture, 2022