British photographer Frank Lebon’s first publication, One Blood, is an affectionate, vivid portrait of friends and family that takes blood as subject and metaphor
Blood is the throughline in Frank Lebon’s debut book. Titled One Blood, and shot between 2020 and 2023, largely during the pandemic, the book takes blood as both subject matter and metaphor, transforming it into a symbol for love, health and unity in taxing times. Alongside portraits of his loved ones (bathed in a red glow, thanks to fingers placed in front of the camera’s flash), One Blood features microscopic, abstract photographs of blood samples collected from friends and family during the pandemic, an artistic exercise that provided ample reason for Lebon to visit his friends in London during lockdown. “The spark that ignited the idea was originally the spark of a flash, my fingers pressed up against it, the light would shine through my finger and project the red of my blood upon my subject,” Lebon writes in the book. “As with almost anything noteworthy I have ever created, it was birthed from a mistake; my fingers found themselves there as they had nowhere else to go.”
Lebon is an in-demand photographer and filmmaker working between the realms of fashion and music, having shot campaigns for brands including Miu Miu, Gucci, Palace, Dior and Diesel, and memorable music videos for A$AP Rocky, King Krule, James Blake and Mount Kimbie. His latest fashion commission, a short film for Skims, features Kim Kardashian and an army of identical clones ‘testing out’ her illustrious shapewear on a spaceship orbiting Earth; like all of Lebon’s work, the film is instantly recognisable as his own thanks to its quirky plotline, innovative experimentation with form, and his raw, unfiltered eye for beauty and character.
Photography, as his new book reminds us, is quite literally in Lebon’s blood; his father, Mark, shot covers for The Face and i-D in the 1980s as part of the emergent Buffalo aesthetic, while his brother, Tyrone, is another in-demand fashion photographer, having shot iconic campaigns for Burberry, Calvin Klein, Phoebe Philo and Bottega Veneta. Frank, Tyrone, and Mark often appear in each other’s work – Frank pops up in Tyrone’s extraordinary music video for Frank Ocean’s 2016 song Nikes – and One Blood is no different; Tyrone, Mark (and his mother) feature heavily in the book, walking on the English coast, cutting each other’s hair, and playing with dogs – this is an easygoing, loving portrait of familial intimacy and familiarity. When asked about the symbolic meaning of blood, Lebon says, “The strongest thing that comes to mind is family. [But] this project tries to dissect the idea that blood is strictly shared by our biological family.”
Hence the photos of his friends, his girlfriend Carmen, and NHS key workers littered throughout the book; they are not his biological family, but his chosen one. Lebon’s love for his subjects is always crystal clear; there are photos of Carmen tucked up in bed, deep in slumber, ‘360-degree portraits’ – collages of friend’s faces mish-mashed together to create space-collapsing, disorientating composite images – pictures of NHS ‘blood bikers’ zooming urgently through the city streets delivering blood and human organs, and images of his friend’s blood slides on his desk, carefully labelled by name. “One of the themes [of the book] is about what connects us all, beneath the superficial surface of our skin,” Lebon explains.
A revelation comes when Lebon becomes unwell and is hospitalised; he is later diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Blood, formerly just an artistic obsession, now becomes a necessity; the book features self-portraits of Lebon injecting insulin into his abdomen, and photos of his hospital bed – a mess of machines and wires – with flowers stuffed into a water bottle, Pringles, and a pair of wired headphones strewn on the bed. “I started most elements of the project prior to being diagnosed. The fact that drawing blood became a huge part of my daily life seemed beyond coincidence!” Lebon explains. “Being diagnosed was scary, life-changing, and humbling, and this project helped me make sense of it.”
But as always, love pulls him through. An essay in the book written by Laura Serejo Genes mentions how Carmen, Lebon’s girlfriend, came to visit him in hospital dressed in disguise as a nurse during the pandemic. ”Carmen, his lover, his partner, his friend, crosses Covid lines and brings him flowers, brings him life. She’s her own flash, always shining her rose-glow on the world. She lays her petite body on his, forming intimacy in a sterile place.” Lebon’s approach to love is summed up here, and in his 360-portraits, which feature multiple people at once, becoming one. “[These] visual aids allow our eyes to complete what the heart knows,” writes Genes. “One blood across images, across scales, across space and across time, running through us all.”
One Blood by Frank Lebon is published by Little Big Man, and is out now. An accompanying exhibition is on show at Entrance in New York until 25 May 2024.