Rahim Fortune, Untitled, Dallas, Texas, 2025. Copyright of the artist and Sasha Wolf Projects, New York. Originally commissioned by Aperture and Documentary Arts.
Though Rahim Fortune has been somewhat caught in a whirlwind for the past year, since his book Hardtack (Loose Joints, 2024) landed him a place on the Deutsche Börse shortlist (2025) as well as a Les Rencontres d’Arles 2024 Author Book Awards nomination, he insists his life is “pretty normal. I live in a pretty small town in Texas and I have a dog and an old car,” he tells me. His humility is, at the very least, charming, and at best, synonymous with his work. Fortune’s photographs are quiet yet glowing portraits (usually in black and white) of communities – families, friends, neighbours – in the American South where he grew up – Austin, Texas and then Oklahoma – revealing through tenderness and beauty the complexities and realities of Black life in the US.
Fortune is now gearing up for a solo show at CPW in Kingston, New York. Between a Memory and Me, opening 20 September, comes after Fortune’s Deutsche Börse exhibition at The Photographer’s Gallery, London, and breaks new ground for the artist. Fortune usually relies on black and white imagery – “I use black and white to interrogate and explore the history between Black Americans and photography, particularly within the context of community photography,” he explains. But on commission with Aperture last year, he began employing colour photography in a very intentional way.