Awol Erizku’s First Book Mystic Parallax Shows the Artist’s Tremendous Power

Tessa Thompson delicately balancing a hawk on her arm. Michael B. Jordan holding onto a leashed husky against a backdrop of snow-capped, craggy mountains. Pregnant Beyoncé perched atop a candy apple-red car stuffed with flowers.

These are just some of the unforgettable images created by the artist Awol Erizku, an Ethiopian-American photographer, painter, filmmaker, sculptor, and DJ born in Gondar and raised in the Bronx. They’re also a mere handful of the colorful, surreal, and striking photographs included in Erizku’s first major monograph, tilted Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax.

Published by Aperture, the book features 300 pages of Erizku’s visual works, which reference and reimagine Black contemporary culture while nodding to elements of nature and spirituality—creating a canonized version of history he calls “Afro-Esotericism.” “It’s important for me to create confident, powerful, downright regal images of Black people,” Erizku says.

In addition to his photographs, the monograph also contains essays written by Guggenheim curator Ashley James and New Yorker critic Doreen St. Félix, along with conversations between artist Urs Fischer and Antwaun Sargent—the latter of whom was instrumental in getting the book across the finish line. In 2016, Erizku tells me over e-mail, the artist contributed to Aperture magazine’s “Vision & Justice” issue—a common occurrence, as the photographer has been tapped to shoot covers for Time, GQ, and many more. But the special edition, which touched on photographic representation for Black Americans, ended up being the catalyst for the monograph’s creation. The issue “ignited the possibility of making this book, but Antwaun Sargent and Michael Famighetti, Aperture’s editor in chief, had a lot to do with its urgency,” Erizku says. (Sargent also hosted a launch party with Gucci for Mystic Parallax at the Gucci Wooster Bookstore on June 27–which saw A$AP Ferg, Kerby Jean Raymond, and Sanford Biggers as just a few of its guest.)

When it comes to his process of selecting images for the tome, Erizku says “The selection was very straightforward: nothing but the bangers. But then it had to be about the right bangers.” Combing through his oeuvre, Erizku began to see his works in a new light. “The sequencing has allowed me to contextualize my older images in a more accurate context,” he adds. But when asked whether he has a favorite, the artist says that’s like “asking which child is the favorite. But technically speaking, it would have to be the last photo in the book”—a shot of his studio mood board—“which is more of a hidden treasure chest.” Below, scroll through a preview of the images featured in Mystic Parallax, available now.