Writer Zadie Smith pays homage to photographer Deana Lawson in the artist’s first Monograph for Aperture. In this essay, Smith describes how Deana Lawson’s work uniquely places individuals from the African Diaspora in a “kingdom of restored glory”. Despite the circumstances her subjects might find themselves in–poverty, overcriminalization, systemic racism–in a Lawson portrait, they radiate royalty. Smith describes Lawson’s subjects as queens; men and women who are celebrated in ways they so rarely are by our visual culture. “Deana Lawson’s Kingdom of Restored Glory” is a tribute to a photographer who captures her subjects as they hope to be seen “beautiful, imperious, unbroken, unfallen”.