Imaging Black Culture

NEW PALTZ — Deborah Willis, Ph.D., Professor of Photography and Imaging Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, will present a lecture for the Art History Association on Tuesday, November 18, 2003 at 7:00 p.m.in the Honor’s Center, College Hall, SUNY New Paltz. The lecture is free and open to all.

The 2000 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship award winner, Deborah Willis is Professor of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. She is an exhibiting photographer, and for more than 20 years, her investigation and recovery of the rich legacy of African American photography provides an invaluable and irreplaceable resource to filling the gap in American historiography.

Among her most notable book projects are “Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present,” W.W. Norton, New York (2000) and “The Black Female Body: A Photographic History” with Carla Williams (2002).

Willis’ lecture at SUNY New Paltz will look at the transformation of the black image in photography in general, the works of black photographers and the black female body in photographic history. She will discuss the notion of the gaze’ as more than just a look, and focus on how African Americans created a new and revised self-image through the medium of photography at the turn of the twentieth century.

Many black people attempted to challenge the predominantly negative representations circulating in American culture by offering alternative and representational images of the black body. In this lecture Willis examines the phenomena of racial uplift in the imagery, the body as an art subject, and the works of contemporary black photography.

Willis is the guest of the Art History Association, a member of the SUNY New Paltz Student Association. For additional information contact the Art History Department, 845-257-3875.

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