{"id":143,"date":"2011-03-16T17:12:08","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T21:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/?p=143"},"modified":"2011-04-12T14:33:36","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T18:33:36","slug":"ddeborah-willis-ph-d-university-professor-chair-department-of-photography-imaging-new-york-university-tisch-school-of-the-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/2011\/03\/16\/ddeborah-willis-ph-d-university-professor-chair-department-of-photography-imaging-new-york-university-tisch-school-of-the-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"Dean’s Dialogue: Posing Beauty in African American Portraits: A Talk by Dr. Deborah Willis February 8, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Deborah Willis,\u00a0MacArthur fellow and\u00a0chair of New York University’s photography department<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI was a student in the 70s,” said Willis in her opening remarks to the\u00a0attendees of “Posing Beauty,” a Dean’s Dialogue hosted by the School of Art & Design. “I asked my professor \u2018Where are the other images,\u2019” of African Americans? “There were (those of) tenant farmers, of laborers and that\u2019s fine.” But the range of images of African American life was woefully incomplete. \u00a0Willis had a “curiosity of the lack of images of blacks.”\u00a0\u00a0Her professor suggested she search out photos that might tell a larger story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Deborah Willis's 2009 book cover "Posing Beauty"<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Her book, “Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present,” is another turn in her investigation.\u00a0\u00a0“I found myself as a resource…I grew up in a beauty shop. \u00a0The images for me are to open up the dialog–\u00a0Sometimes an image is a story of desire, other times it\u2019s a woman seeking the American Dream,” said Willis.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Pickin, by Lauren Kelley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Willis is observant of “how women are always under surveillance\u2026I\u2019m always asking \u2018How are these images used?'”<\/p>\n

Among the photographs Willis showed were: \u00a0a posting of run-away slave described as “rather good looking”; cinema stars like Josephine Baker; various looks of women working outside the home; studio\u00a0portraits; and iconic shots of Issac Hayes, Malcolm X, Pam Grier and James Brown.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Isaac Hayes by Ernest Withers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cBlack beauty has been silenced,” said Willis. “Special issues (on African- American life) gives the public an opportunity for exchange,\u201d she said \u201cbut I wish it didn’t\u00a0have to be a special issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Harlem Queen, by Lewis Watts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“What I took away from this,” said fashion design student Michelle Richards, “is that when she was a student she asked: \u00a0‘Where are the black photographers and photographs?’ Too often students accept the lesson as fact rather than as an introduction, and then you take it further. This whole thing started as a research project. She took the initiative and researched the gap in her education.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Assistant Dean Dr. Erika Massaquoi with guest speaker Dr. Deborah Willis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI was a student in the 70s,” said Willis. “I asked my professor \u2018Where are the other images,\u2019” of African Americans. “There were (those of) tenant farmers of laborers and that\u2019s fine,” she said. Her professor set her on course to investigate and search for the photos Willis knew had to exist. “I found myself as a resource. The images for me are to open up the dialog\u2026how women are always under surveillance\u2026I\u2019m always asking \u2018How are these images used.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":285,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[247],"tags":[38260,4067,4068,4069,4070],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deans-dialogue","tag-deans-dialogue","tag-deborah-willis","tag-erika-massaquoi","tag-photography","tag-posing-beauty"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p13xjz-2j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/285"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}