AAST student Zakkiyyah Najeebah listed as Breakout Artist of 2019
"Photographer Zakkiyyah Najeebah is interested in how people construct their lives and identities through day-to-day intimacies. Reaching a place in her career where she has the conviction and confidence in her artistic voice, she has unapologetically made the lives of black women and femmes, especially queer women, central to her work. Her most recent exhibition, “A Different Kind of Love Story: For Us” at ADDS DONNA, centered on a series of Polaroid diptychs that juxtaposed images of these candid moments to formal portraits of the same subjects. Even the formal portraits contain a touch of the personal, created in the homes of the pictured women and femmes. Najeebah took Nan Goldin’s work as inspiration for thinking about documenting intimacy and like Goldin, she brings her camera to her day-to-day moments in a way that has become naturalized in her social circles. Najeebah’s artistic practice and life are deeply intertwined..."