Tzion Lawrence

Tzion Lawrence is a documentary photographer who has a background as an archivist and studies in journalism. He has exhibited repeatedly at the Greenpoint Gallery in New York and is also a resident artist there. Tzion’s background as an archivist includes darkroom lab work with historical film negatives of civil rights leaders and he has executed additional photographic work with Sony Music Entertainment in regard to retouching, photographing as well as editing. Although currently living in New York, he is originally from South Carolina and describes his artistic practice as “redefining a visual landscape through the intersection of identity and the unknown”.

The portfolio of Tzion Lawrence is quite improvisational and can be described as fluxus photography in such a way he captures actional life throughout the gritty streets of New York. From a couple caressing and kissing each other on the subway, a homeless man picking up a cigarette butt on the dirty street, or dollar bills scattered on the floor of a strip club, he captures the mindful moments he finds of various New York personalities. Even his staged photography has a sense of improvisation, such as a semi-nude woman leaning on a bicycle and displaying her necklace. Such actions reflect a way of capturing raw scenery which are directly correlated to the ways of ‘Old New York’.

These sociological and psychological capturing of behaviors typically reveal the working class mannerisms or an ‘under-class’ lurking within the underbelly of the city. Additionally, Tzion’s silhouette photography of nature depicts massive flock of birds taking off for flight or the overhead concealment of the sky through ominous tree foliage from a perspective which seems adventurous and poetic. His subjects typically do not pose, as they are captured within their natural state of action going about their business in the city. The performative actions may seem familiar initially, such as an older couple peering through the window of a Chinese restaurant watching roasted ducks rotate on a spit, however these documentative scenes are captured with a heightened sense of realism and artistic cropping which reveals a sense of idealization of everyday actions by ordinary people. 

Untitled # 9 (pictured above) exemplifies Tzion Lawrence’s fluxus tendencies within his documentary art. Tzion captures the moment a motorcyclist gets off his bike and peers into a shop window. His reflection in the window with his motorcycle helmet along with various signs on the window such as ‘we stand with Ukraine’ reveals the shop window as the focal point and focus on interest within the composition. Such a capturing of actional engagement with an urban environment reveals the characters and narratives tucked away with the unseen and unadvertised corners of New York. 

Tzion Lawrence presents an exciting portfolio rich in improvisational fluxus documentary which conveys a sociological and psychological poetic narrative of daily life within New York. His gritty, unapologetic realism and angular compositions reveal perspectives in sustaining the relevance of documenting daily life through an angle which reveals typical encounters in unusual manner. What makes Tzion’s photography remarkable would be his ability to accentuate and glorify the unremarkable, the heavy sense of realism and fluxus observation of treating photography as a process rather than a final product.

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