Adam Davis: Now You See Me  

September 18 – December 20, 2025

Adam Davis: Now You See Me is a new body of work featuring members of Atlanta’s Black LGBTQIA+ community and part of Davis’s larger project, Black Magic, an effort to create 20,000 tintype portraits from the Black diaspora.

This collection of large-scale ambrotypes interrogates individual and collective responsibility in relation to the measured and historic erasure of queer communities around the world. Referencing the sordid history of racial bias in photography, Davis uses 19th-century wet plate photographic processes to render his subjects, highlighting layered stories of exclusion, perception, and the Black body throughout the history of image-making. Davis’s large-format camera is also presented to demystify his process and provide historical context.

Davis’s use of mirrors requires viewers to use their own reflection to render the artwork visible, provoking an allegorical experience of empathy. Accompanied by an altar presenting offerings donated by Atlanta’s Black LGBTQIA+ community, the works on view speak to communal responsibility and accountability in the minds of those who view Queer bodies as Other.

Adam Davis (b. 1994) is an educator, artist, advocate, and practitioner in the art of collaboration. He embraces creativity, communication, and storytelling to find solutions to problems that hinder diverse and equitable cultural progression at the intersection of the Arts and Education.

In his ongoing project titled Black Magic, Davis is attempting to create 20,000 tintype portraits from the Black diaspora — one of the largest contemporary archives of Black portraits in the world. Davis is a 2024–26 Tulsa Artist Fellow and has hosted workshops at Harvard Art Museum, Black Image Center, and Museum of Fine Arts Boston, among many others.