Photographer Tiff J. Sutton was born in 1981 in Rochester, NY, and was raised in suburban St. Louis, MO. She began documenting family and friends after receiving a Kodak camera as a Christmas gift in the early 1990s. While primarily a self-taught photographer, she also attended classes at Washington University in St. Louis and St. Louis Community College. Sutton is a 2020 Harvard #InTheCity Visual Artist Fellow and was awarded the Regional Arts Commission St. Louis Artist Support Grant in 2019, the Regional Arts Commission Artist Relief grant, the Luminary Futures Fund: Emergency Relief for Artists, and A Sustaining Arts Practice Fund (ASAP Fund). Sutton has decided to work with black women exclusively, as a way to reconnect with herself and discuss social movements. Sutton works with film and instant cameras.
Black Body Radiation is a series of color photographic portraits of black women. The barely there bodies in domestic spaces and seeing multiple facial and body expressions of the sitter emphasizes the complexity of each woman. When photographing the sitter, I employ a camera technique that allows several exposures on one negative frame; this process is made in camera with no post production. I use this technique to further aid the concept of the overall work.
