Reflections in Black: A Reframing Book Launch

Join the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection and The Barnes Foundation as we celebrate the release of "Reflections in Black: A Reframing" the 25th anniversary edition of Dr. Deborah Willis' internationally acclaimed publication, "Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present." 

Willis will be joined in conversation with moderator Dyana Williams and a panel of Philadelphia-area photographers: Lonnie Graham, Nashormeh Lindo and Wendel White.

This talk will be held in the Comcast NBCUniversal Auditorium and includes access to the collection galleries and Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets.

This event will be held at:

The Barnes Foundation
2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19130

About "Reflections in Black: A Reframing":

This enhanced volume, with a new foreword from Robin D. G. Kelley and a coda from Kalia Brooks, once again affirms the power of photography to reconfigure our conception of Black life in the African diaspora and American history. Featuring the works of photographers such as Albert Chong, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Allison Janae Hamilton, Renee Cox, Carrie Mae Weems, Andre D. Wagner, and Hank Willis Thomas, this new edition is dedicated to artists who stretch the definition of photography, creating pieces more akin to multimedia and conceptual art.

About the speaker:

Deborah Willis, Ph.D., is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has affiliated appointments with the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Social & Cultural and the Institute of Fine Arts where she teaches courses on Photography & Imaging, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender. She is also the director of NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture/Institute for African American Affairs. Her research examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, contemporary women photographers and beauty. 

She received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and was a Richard D. Cohen Fellow in African and African American Art, Hutchins Center, Harvard University; a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, and an Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. Fellow. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received awards from the College Art Association for Writing Art History (2021) and the Outstanding Service Award from the Royal Photographic Society in the UK. She has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African diasporic cultures.