Yvonne and James II

Jordan Casteel has rooted her practice in community engagement, painting from her own photographs of people she encounters. Posing her subjects within their natural environments, her oversized portraits and cropped compositions chronicle personal observations of the human experience. Yvonne and James II is a testament to the evolving relationships of respect, dignity, and reciprocity that fuel Casteel’s work. This complex composition conveys different iterations of images of the same subject, the generational passing of time, and a personal story embedded in a scene. Seated in the midst of his kitchen, James props a frame that memorializes the union decades ago to his much loved and recently deceased wife Yvonne. Behind him, stuck on his refrigerator door, is an image James cut from a poster of an earlier portrait of him by Casteel. This is her third portrait of James, who was a street vendor in Harlem when she first met, photographed, and painted him in 2015.