Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present

by Deborah Willis

Long overlooked in American culture, African American beauty finally get its due in this landmark work. As a student in the 1970s, Deborah Willis came to the realization that images of black beauty, female and male, simply did not exist in the larger culture. Determined to redress this imbalance, Willis examined everything from vintage ladies’ journals to black newspapers, and started what would become a lifelong quest. With more than two hundred arresting images, many previously unpublished, Posing Beauty recovers a world many never knew existed. Historical subjects such as Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker illuminate the past; Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali take us to the civil rights era; Denzel Washington, Lil’ Kim, and Michelle Obama celebrate the present. Featuring the works of more than one hundred photographers, including Carl van Vechten, Eve Arnold, Lee Friedlander, and Carrie Mae Weems, Willis’s book not only celebrates the lives of the famous but also captures the barber shop, the bodybuilding contest, and prom night. Posing Beauty challenges our most fundamental assumptions about what it means to be “beautiful.”
242 duotone photographs; 40 pages of five-color photographs

Genres: Photography, Art, African American, Nonfiction, History

244 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Dr. Willis is chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

Reviews

[Jocelin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great art book about the African American images from the past to the present. Most of the photography was presented in black & white (favorite photography medium). The images were simply presented and simply luminous. The cover work is striking and powerful. Great book for studying form and technique.

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

photography/art (coffee table book)
Portrait photographs, most of which are in black and white. Maybe half are portraits of ordinary people, beautifully archived and included in this collection, but there are also some very famous people, and several dozen more who ought to be famous but whose faces aren't perhaps that well-known. A partial list:
Madame C.J. Walker, p. 6
Zora Neale Hurston, p. 11
Billie Holiday, p. 17
Josephine Baker, p. 28
Malcolm X, p. 29
Rosa Parks, p. 30
Muhammad Ali, pp 32, 74
Gordon Parks (photographer/director), 33
Angela Davis, p. 37
James Baldwin, 38
Donyale Luna (model/actress), pp 39-40
Huey P. Newton, 42
Denzel Washington, 50
Lena Horne, 71-72
James Brown, pp 74, 159
Jimi Hendrix, 75
Isaac Hayes (singer/songwriter/producer), p. 76
Stokely Carmichael, pp 77, 161
Marian Anderson, p. 116
Robert H. McNeill (photographer), 133
Louis Armstrong, p. 168
Miles Davis, 170
Sean "Puffy. P. Diddy" Combs, 185
Otis Redding, 190
Barack Obama pp 192, 226, 232
Condoleeza Rice, 197
Aretha Franklin, 206
Ray Charles, 207
Lil' Kim, 217
Serena Williams, 228
Michelle Obama, 233

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didn't know what to expect when M checked this out from the library, but the introduction was on point and the series of photographs organized, labeled and curated into sections based on topics explored in the introduction essay did an excellent job of illustrating what Deborah Willis had to say on the subject of race, politics, beauty, commercialism, history, composition, lighting, and the art of capturing portraits and the movement of life.

[Shila Iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This woman is magnificent. I cannot believe how the art speaks.

[Natalie Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breath-takingly lovely.

[Vedia Barnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED!!!!