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At the Underground Museum in Los Angeles, radiant geodes have been placed in the corners for the safeguarding of Deana Lawson’s exhibition PLANES In this city, the protective quality of crystals is accepted in the same way that lightbulbs are agreed to be sources of light In certain corners, Lawson tacked up numerous 4 x 6 inch glossy prints: snapshots of her own younger self alongside scenes of atrocity, ritual, expedition and celebrity Many of the images were scanned during her expansive research into black visual culture at American libraries The assembled histories could be read as reports from a diasporic cosmology   The collages also serve as the mood boards for Lawson’s own photographs, presented here as framed inkjet prints, each around four feet tall They depict black people of various ages in staged domestic scenes The models are often strangers to the artist and each other; the entwined man and woman in SEAGULLS IN KITCHEN (2017), for example, weren’t previously acquainted, and the brass birds that shadow them on the cinder block wall migrated there for the shoot For WOMAN WITH CHILD (2017), the artist placed her own son alongside another woman as if he were a momentary changeling At first, the images register as intimate family portraits, a testament to Lawson’s ability to disarm her subjects Even the man holding a shotgun defensively in UNCLE MACK (2017) has a softness about his wizened face   In these images, identity is both inscribed on bodies and articulated through their surroundings The interiors, shot in New York, South Africa and LA, appear underprivileged yet regal Motifs recur: parquet flooring, bath towels on sofas, elephant statuettes, grandma curtains (Zadie Smith has averred that ‘paragraphs could be written on Lawson’s curtains alone’) Certain objects give the impression that other characters have vanished, or perhaps just wait in the wings: matriarchs out shopping, children put to sleep In SOWETO QUEEN (2017), a nude woman crouches on a towel alongside remote controls,