In partnership with Howard University.
Larry W. Cook (b.1986 Silver, Spring, MD) is an interdisciplinary artist and archivist working across photography, video, and mixed media. Cook received his MFA from George Washington University and his B.A. in Photography from SUNY Plattsburgh. From 2007 to 2013, he worked as a club photographer throughout the Washington D.C. area, setting up makeshift photo booths that featured backdrops of surrealist landscapes and luxury goods. Cook’s practice explores how the pose and hand-painted backdrops circulate within vernacular club and prison photographs, often re-imagining them through collage, digital manipulation, and staged photography. Cook’s work celebrates the legacy of the pose as a form of individual agency and pays homage to the rich tradition of Black cultural spaces.
Cook has exhibited his work nationally at the Brooklyn Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Mississippi Museum of Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, MoMA PS1, Walters Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery, and internationally at Schiefe Zähne in Germany. His work is in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Harvard Art Museums, Baltimore Museum of Art, Light Work, and other institutions. Cook’s work has been published in the New York Times, Forbes, Frieze Magazine, NPR, Ebony Magazine, and Hyperallergic. Cook has held artists-in-residence at Light Work, Stable Arts, and The Nicholson Project. Cook is currently an Associate Professor at Howard University.
