Freddie L. Rankin II is a photographic artist based in New York. His practice explores Black interiority as both subject and method, weaving autobiographical experience into broader considerations of pleasure, leisure, and self-regard. Working primarily through photography and self-portraiture, with extensions into abstraction and material process, he examines the body as a site of presence, vulnerability, and quiet resistance. His work resists spectacle in favor of contemplative moments that invite sustained looking.

Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, Rankin’s relationship to photography developed through self-directed study and travel throughout the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States. He received his MFA from Bard College in 2019, where his thesis examined subjugation, agency, and Blackness, laying the foundation for his ongoing project Meditations on Pleasure (2019– ), which approaches pleasure as a daily and relational practice.

Rankin’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions including Notes on Contentment (All Street, New York), Notions of Subjugation (ICP–Bard), and The Inverse Color Perspective (OkaySpace, Brooklyn). Group exhibitions include presentations at Bronx River Arts Center, Swivel Gallery, the International Center of Photography, A4 Arts Foundation (Cape Town), and MoMA PS1, as well as book and zine fairs at MoMA PS1 and Baxter Street at CCNY.

He has been an artist-in-residence at MASS MoCA, Byrdcliffe, and Baldwin for the Arts, and a recipient of fellowships from the Richard Avedon Foundation and the International Center of Photography. His practice continues to evolve through material rigor, dialogue, and sustained inquiry.