Hortense's Red Dress, 2017. Deborah Willis
Dr. Deborah Willis, the chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging and renowned photography historian and curator, has been all over the news––and the eastern seaboard––lately.
Most recently, she was the featured in an article in TIME Magazine on the subject of early African-American photographers, adapted from the essay, "The Social Lives of Photographs," by Laura Coyle and Michèle Gates Moresi in Pictures With Purpose: Early Photographs from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The new publication will the published by the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in March.
She was also featured in a New Yorker article about a new book on the early American photographer, Hugh Mangum, for which she wrote the forward.
On March 1st, Dr. Deb will be giving talks at the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies on her body of work since her seminal publication, Picturing Us.
That same weekend, her traveling exhibition, "In Pursuit of Beauty," will be at the Jefferson School in Charlottesville, VA. She will give a public lecture on Saturday, March 2nd.
Additionally, her other traveling curated exhibition, "Posing Beauty in African American Culture" will be up at the David. C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland College Park until April 27, 2019.