Photographer Tawny Chatmon celebrates Black girls and their hairstyles in her dazzling works. The example at right is from her series The Redemption, which features photographs of young Black girls with a variety of hairstyles: braids, curls, knots, and more. Chatmon uses 24-karat gold paint to embellish the composition, making the subject's bracelets and clothing glitter. By using this technique, Chatmon references the 19th-century Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, whose best-known paintings feature gold embellishments.
Chatmon says that Klimt’s work evokes “grace, magnificence, and beauty.” She uses gold to illustrate those sentiments and “to uplift and elevate Black hair, tradition, and culture freeing us from negative stereotypes,” the artist explains.