Quil Lemons (b. 1997, South Philadelphia) is a New York-based artist and photographer whose work tenderly reimagines the intersections of Blackness, queerness, masculinity, and kinship. Lemons’ received his B.A from Eugene Lang College at The New School.
His practice is deeply rooted in personal mythology, using the camera to build worlds where softness is a form of resistance and beauty becomes a site of liberation. His images oscillate between the intimate and the iconic, drawing from familial archives, fashion fantasy, and queer futurity to forge a visual language that is at once poetic, political, and defiantly tender.
In 2021, he became the youngest photographer to create the lead image for the cover of Vanity Fair. His work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, Hannah Traore Gallery and internationally across both fine art and editorial platforms. Lemons’ vision is a meditation on care—how we hold one another, how we see ourselves, and how we might be seen anew. He offers not just pictures, but portals.