This photograph belongs to Rashod Taylor’s ongoing series, Little Black Boy. In 2018 the artist began a long-form photographic project featuring his son. Little Black Boy emerged from the natural act of a father photographing his son, but some of the images were more weighted and critical- personal and collective. Both universal and profound, these stand-out photographs are added to an annual-release of works that flesh-out the evolving Little Black Boy series. LJ With The Hose was an early-release and thus a founding artwork forming the base-line of the series.

We know this moment from the memory of our own lives- through it we might transport though memory to our own backyard on a hot summer day and recall the feel of the cooling water from the garden hose. Light from the sun glimmers with a mesmerizing rhythm and flow of the water that drains endlessly. We become as lost in the beauty of this moment, just the subject himself.

Rashod Taylor’s photographs are deeply rooted to tradition and break new ground. Taylor adds to the history of the family portraiture genre following in the steps of such influences as Sally Mann, Larry Sultan, and Nicholas Nixon. While Taylor nods at such inspirations, he forges a path of his own. Scenes in Taylor’s Little Black Boy photographs are often universal, but their appearance in American culture has not been. Taylor’s work speaks to an under-addressed chapter of the United States: the Black American experience. Taylor’s works are intimate, full of promise and hope but also disease. They nurture the emotion of love and protection. The power of his work earned Taylor the 2021 Arnold Newman Award for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture. His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.