African Photos Are the Backbone of a Living Room Gallery
Image by Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times.
By Lovia Gyarkye | The New York Times
“Living abroad changed everything for me,” Stephanie Baptist, a Brooklyn-based cultural producer and editor, said. “It opened up an entirely new scope of possibility and the idea of having global conversations.”
Ms. Baptist, whose first love is photography, moved to London in 2009 after working as a photography agent in New York for nearly six years. She pursued a master’s degree in arts administration and cultural policy at Goldsmiths, University of London, to expand her artistic knowledge and equip herself to work with artists in a more meaningful way.
The move also inspired “an exploratory phase.” While in London, Ms. Baptist dived into works by artists of color and familiarized herself with names beyond legends like Malik Sidibé.
“I was interested in who else was out there, and I started to look up and see if there were any spaces dedicated to black artists,” she said. Through her research, Ms. Baptist came across galleries whose rosters included the kinds of artists she found interesting. In 2011, she bought her first piece — Hamidou Maïga’s “Untitled (1973).”
Read more about Baptist’s collection from The New York Times.
