Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Man and Woman) from the "Kitchen Table" series, 1990, gelatin silver print, 25" x 25"
The work by Carrie Mae Weems above is part of one of our current traveling exhibitions, Posing Beauty in African American Culture, curated by artist and historian Deb Willis. According to the exhibition catalogue, the show, "...explores the contested ways in which African and African American beauty have been represented in historical and contemporary contexts through a diverse range of media including photography, film, video, fashion, advertising, and other forms of popular culture such as music and the internet. Throughout the Western history of art and image-making, the relationship between beauty and art has become increasingly complex within contemporary art and popular culture." Willis selected works by several artists--including Lyle Ashton Harris, Sheila Pree Bright, Leonard Freed, Renee Cox, Anthony Barboza, Mickalene Thomas, and Jeanne Moutousammy-Ashe, among others--who frame aesthetics, race, class, and gender within art, popular culture, and politics. In total, the show includes 84 photographs and 1 video.
In many respects, this exhibition is an extension of Deb Willis' practice as both a photographer and a photo-historian and educator. Among her many important scholarly texts is Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographs, 1840 to the Present (W.W. Norton, 2000), which renders visible a history of black photography that is often overlooked and ignored by Western photo history. Because of this, the text is widely considered the first comprehensive history of black photographers, outlining a history that includes James VanDerZee, Gordon Parks, Pat Ward Williams, Chris Johnson, Terry Boddie, and Calvin Hicks. With nearly 600 images, the book details the transitions and transformations of the black everyday "...from slavery to the Great Migration to contemporary suburban life, including rare antebellum daguerrotypes, photojournalism of the Civil Rights Era, and multimedia portraits of middle-class families." Many of these themes, and some of these images, made their way into the Posing Beauty exhibition.
Additionally, Deb Willis worked with Thomas Allen Harris on his docu-film, Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (2014; travelled to independent theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and St. Louis; on PBS on February 16, 2015). This fantastic film chronicles much of Willis' research, but does so through the personal narrative of Thomas Allen Harris. Harris acts as our narrator, explaining his relationship to the image, his family, and his black history. He discusses his family photo album and explains how he used the image to connect the pieces of a larger history. In the film, other photographers, such as Renee Cox, Carrie Mae Weems, Thomas Allen Harris' brother, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Deb Willis herself, show their family photographs and important works by African American photographers, and discuss their relationships to representation, visibility, and American history. The film is part of a larger project of Harris' called the Digital Diaspora Roadshow. Harris has been traveling the country, and helping people collect their family photographs. Participants present the photographs to the group and discuss their importance; Harris' team then helps them digitize and archive the photographs, to ensure that they will not be erased from history.
Situated alongside Reflections in Black, Through a Lens Darkly, and a wider history of black American history, Posing Beauty in African American Culture is an exhibition that celebrates and challenges representation. It asks viewers to deepen their understandings of the image, it's necessity, and it's past failures. Deb Willis has collected some iconic photos and placed them alongside some never-before-seen photos, asking the question: what else has been made invisible? And how can we fix this?
For more information on Curatorial Assistance and Posing Beauty, please visit: http://www.curatorial.com/posing-beauty
For more information on Deb Willis, please visit: http://debwillisphoto.com/home.html
For more information on Harris' film and upcoming screenings, please visit: http://1world1family.me/
