Liz Johnson Artur

This self-titled 2016 monograph was Liz Johnson Artur's first book-length survey, drawing on three decades of photographing Black communities across the African diaspora, from her Black Balloon Archive.

Published by Bierke in an edition of 700 clothbound copies with a photograph tipped into the cover, the book presents a cross-section of images made in London, Moscow, Accra, New York and elsewhere since the late 1980s, moving between portraiture, street photography and the everyday life of the communities she photographs. It was named to The New York Times' Best Photo Books of 2016.

Johnson Artur was born in 1964 in Sokhumi, then part of the Soviet Union, to a Russian mother and Ghanaian father, and has lived and worked in London since 1991. Her practice centers on the long-running Black Balloon Archive, the source for this book as well as her later titles I Will Keep You in Good Company (SPBH Editions/Mack) and PDA (Bierke), and for Dusha, her first solo museum exhibition, shown at the Brooklyn Museum in 2019 and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in 2020.