Deborah Willis (born February 5, 1948) is a contemporary African-American artist, photographer, curator of photography, photographic historian, author, and educator. Among her awards and honors, she is a 2000 MacArthur Fellow. She is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University. In 2024, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Early life and education

Deborah Willis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Ruth and Thomas Willis on February 5, 1948. Willis is the mother of conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas. Her father was a photographer as well, and her close familial ties are apparent in works such as Daddy's Ties: The Tie Quilt II (1992), and Progeny: Deborah Willis and Hank Willis Thomas (2009). Wilis' degrees include a B.F.A. in photography from Philadelphia College of Art in 1975; an M.F.A. in photography from Pratt Institute in 1979; an M.A. in art history from City College of New York in 1986; and a Ph.D. from the Cultural Studies Program of George Mason University in 2001.

Career

During her early career, Deborah Willis sought to find and recognize photography created by African Americans. She also aims to document and portray the beauty of the female body through her works. With the help of Richard Newman from Garland Publishing, she was able to create her first book “Black Photographers, 1840-1940: an Illustrated Bio-bibliography” (1985), which included over three hundred photographers in the book. As she described in an interview, many of the photographers were ready to throw out their work due to lack of recognition before the book. Continuing with her goal of recognizing black photographers, Deborah Willis came out with a second installment called “An Illustrated Bio-Bibliography of Black Photographers, 1940-1988” (1989) which also included contemporary photographers, as she previously intended to in the first installment. Willis was the curator of photographs and the prints/exhibition coordinator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library between 1980 and 1992, after which she became exhibitions curator at the Center for African American History and Culture of the Smithsonian Institution for eight years. Between 2000 and 2001 she was Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She then joined the faculty of New York University as a professor of photography and imaging in the Tisch School of Arts, eventually become the chair of that department. Interested in "historic and cultural documentation and preservation," she has published "some twenty books on African-American photographers and on the representation of blacks in photographic imagery." Among them are Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present (2002), Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present (2009), and Black: A Celebration of a Culture (2014). Also known as "Deb Willis," she survived a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2001. She was the curator of photographs and the prints/exhibition coordinator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library between 1980 and 1992. Willis co-produced the 2014 documentary film Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, which is based on her book Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present. In 2008, she organized the exhibition Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits for the National Museum of African American History and Culture of the Smithsonian Institution. Willis' work was included in the 2015 exhibition We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s at the Woodmere Art Museum.

Other activities

Willis served on the jury that chose the winners of the Rome Prize for the 2023–24 cycle, co-chaired by Naomi Beckwith and Fred Wilson.

Recognition

Willis has received numerous awards and honors, including:

Artistic and photographic works

As an artist and photographer, Willis was represented by Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in Miami and Charles Guice Contemporary in Berkeley, California. Her exhibitions have included: Willis is also a quilter, also incorporating photographic images into her pieces. Daddy's Ties: The Tie Quilt II from 1992 (27 x 34"), for example, is a fabric collage with added button, tie clips, and pins forming "a supple, irregularly shaped memorial." The work references multiple generations and genders, as it elicits memories of fathers teaching their sons, boys maturing into adult clothes and rituals, and women adjusting their husbands' knots. At the same time, however, the artist's cutting and reconfiguration of the ties raises the possibility that such nostalgic references might be outmoded or rejected. This multivalent collage "also memorializes black soldiers who fought in World War II," since Willis includes photos of soldiers on linen fabric collaged onto the tie fabric. Willis's focus on the African-American experience is evident in Tribute to the Hottentot Venus: Bustle (1995), a fabric and photo linen collage (23 x 28") in a triptych format. Small images of Saartjie Baartman, the so-called "Hottentot Venus," appear in the left and right sections together with pieced fabric silhouettes of her body. The central image in the triptych is of a late 19th-century dress with prominent bustle, its shape emphasizing the buttocks. Willis explains that her use of quilting as a technique "reminds us who we are and who and what our ancestors have been to us in the larger society." Her quilts have been included in the following exhibits and catalogs:

Curated exhibitions

Exhibitions that Willis has curated include:

Publications