The New York-based, Philadelphia-born photographer Quil Lemons first picked up a camera at age seven to capture his family in celebration. “In the Black home, my family in particular comes together,” Lemons says over Zoom, midway through packing for London. “We lived close enough that I could get probably 45 to 60 people into one living room. That to me felt like a moment I needed to document.” Now 29 years old and ten years into a career that has made him the youngest artist to ever shoot a Vanity Fair cover, Lemons is releasing his first book, Quiladelphia, named for his vision of the city where he grew up.
Quiladelphia spans Lemons’s first decade, contextualizing work that tenderly explores and expands ideas of Black masculinity, intimacy, vulnerability, and desire. “The forming of the book just allowed me to love my younger self and make sure that he’s taken care of,” says Lemons. “When I think about that younger self, I’m thinking about this future generation of Black boys that will have a better understanding of who they can be.”
The monograph opens with Lemons’s seminal “Glitterboy” series in which he shot fellow Black teen boys in glitter before it gives way to images of his brothers, father, godfather, and stepfather; followed by photographs of major Black luminaries, from Telfar Clemens to Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def. The book also features three new series exploring Black identity, Black men at the center of American symbols of power, and Black masculinity as currency, alongside an essay by Lemons titled African American Trade—What is Trade?, and conversations with the artists Lyle Ashton Harris and Santigold. “Since 2023, when I did the Philadelphia solo show, I became aware of how I could be an agitator to the art space,” Lemons says. “When I started thinking about this newer body of work, I wanted to place and own African American identity. I saw it as such a raw material: everyone was taking from it in this new internet ecosystem, and I wasn’t seeing it awarded to the body or the community that birthed it.”
The new images, styled by Lemons’s husband Parker Harwood with a set by the painter Mars Singleton, see OnlyFans models as Black cowboys, owning and reimagining what that might look like. The seeds for this new work were planted on a trip to Senegal with Santigold that saw Lemons walk through the Door of No Return, a narrow portal on Gorée Island near Dakar that represents the final exit point where enslaved Africans were forced onto ships heading to the Americas. “To walk through that door as a free man in reverse, I started thinking about the ways in which the Black male body is constantly being turned into literal capital and how that exchange is still going on,” Lemons adds. “When hasn’t the Black body been seen as a commodity and not a human? In my act of reclamation and reparation, I wanted to go back to the ways in which Black men styled themselves and in some way, flip this idea of the hyper predator or the super thug. I’m going to flip that back at you with glitter, and [queer intimacy]. It’s showing the nuance the Black queer male is experiencing when living under this country that’s only seen them as a site of commodity.”
Lemons sees the work in conversation with the audience. “It’s not performance art, but it’s definitely a space between fantasy and myth-making. These people become a vessel for the message,” he adds.
Quildelphia is out now via IDEA books. Dover Street Market London hosted a signing in London followed by Dover Street Paris with its own event on Monday, October 19th. “It’s surreal,” Lemons says of the launch. “It’s going to become tangible, and then I’m probably going to need six months more to process what it feels like to be at this moment.”
