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

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 With more than two hundred arresting images, many previously unpublished, Posing Beauty recovers a world many never knew existed.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."

"Willis (Reflections in Black), a MacArthur fellow and chair of New York University's photography department, curates a collection of iconic portraits and snapshots by anonymous photographers in a 'history of beauty that merges gender, race, family, class.' Willis's words, a distillation of her inquiries into beauty and race, are few — the images speak for themselves. The photographs, organized thematically, reach back to the 1890s and forward to the current first family. Famous photographers share perspective with family photographers and those known only as 'Unidentified Photographer.' The recognizably famous — James Baldwin, Marian Anderson, Joe Louis — appear along with those known only as 'Mom and Friend,' 'Two women holding magazine, ca. 1950s' or 'Barber cutting man's hair outdoors, ca. 1930s.' Willis's content is groundbreaking; rarely, for example, are men this adequately represented in a work devoted to 'beauty within black culture.' For Willis, this extraordinary compilation is 'the culmination of my exploration of beauty within black culture and through the medium of photography.' For readers, this is a dazzling eye-opener." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Long overlooked in American culture, African American beauty finally get its due in this landmark work.

Deborah Willis, a MacArthur, Guggenheim, and Fletcher Fellow, is the author of Reflections in Black, Posing Beauty, Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs, and the New York Times bestseller Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs. She is chair of the photography department and a University Professor at New York University.