Avion Pearce: 2024 Aperture Portfolio Prize Winner

Join Aperture for the opening reception of Avion Pearce: 2024 Aperture Portfolio Prize Winner. On view at Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, this exhibition presents the work of Avion Pearce, who was awarded the 2024 Aperture Portfolio Prize for their series In the Hours Between Dawn. 

Merging analog techniques with political purpose and a poetic sensibility, Avion Pearce creates a visual world that operates between reality and dreams. Born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, to Guyanese parents, Pearce has been interested since childhood in beauty and the cultivation of a space. They were inspired by Abelardo Morell’s use of the camera obscura technique, and the photography of Ming Smith, Roy DeCarava, and Graciela Iturbide, who each innovated with light, motion, and ambiance. In their series In the Hours Between Dawn, Pearce explores photography’s potential to chart the interplay between time, the body, and Brooklyn’s transformation.

As the first-prize winner, Pearce will be featured in Aperture’s upcoming summer issue and will receive a 3,000 USD cash prize, a 1,000 USD gift card for mpb.com, and a solo exhibition at Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, opening June 26. 

Avion Pearce studied Photography at Parsons School of Design and is a current MFA candidate for Photography at Yale School of Art. They received the Parsons School of Design BFA Photography Scholarship, and they are a NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship recipient. Their work has been shown at Ryan Lee Gallery, Hudson Opera House, and has been featured in The Cut, W Magazine, Crack Magazine, Netflix and The New York Times.

The Aperture Portfolio Prize aims to spotlight new talent in photography, identifying contemporary trends in the field and highlighting artists whose work deserves greater recognition. Pearce’s work, chosen from an outstanding number of submissions, is published with an essay by Lucy McKeon in the summer 2024 issue of Aperture magazine.