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Donavon Smallwood regards photography as a collective project. "A tradition [every photographer] is contributing to and building upon," as the native New Yorker articulates it. And photographic histories echo throughout each of his brooding black-and-white images, which nod to the work of Vanessa Winship, Judith Joy Ross, Dorothea Lange, Robert Adams, and many others.
Self-taught, aside from a photography class he took in high school, Smallwood's voracious study of books and the internet account, in part, for his deep understanding of the medium. "When I first started, early masters like William Eggleston, Walker Evans and Bruce Gilden most interested me," he reflects. "I was walking around trying to sneak up in front of people in the street. But after a while I...