“Willis’ gift is to bring us into each picture, inviting us to remember our own family and our own history, and making us see that to do so is the best way to understand another’s.

Deborah Willis’ earliest photographs, taken when she was around nine years old, were of her family’s Christmas presents and their television set-not universal images but rather pictures of a particular moment in the life of an African American family alive at a particular moment in American culture.

An accomplished archivist, curator, professor, and, of course, photographer, Willis has imbued all of her work with this kind of historical and cultural awareness, assembling in black-and-white and color photographs, photo quilts, and fabric collages, a history of images and visions of African American life.“

So writes Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in his foreword to Family History Memory, this remarkable book by Deborah Willis. Here, collected for the first time, are Willis’ one-of-a-kind photo quilts, her provocative and moving personal photo essays, and her important and revelatory critical essays about the vital contribution African American photographers made and continue to make to the advancement of photography in this country. Willis shows that not only did photographers like J.P. Ball and Gordon Parks advance the techniques of the medium, but through their work documenting the lives of blacks in America they changed the way blacks were portrayed--and so thought of--in this country. For anybody interested in photography, black history, or personal expression, this book is important. For anyone interested in all three, Family History Memory is essential.

Praise

“Family, History, Memory whispers a central theme that ultimately transcends the black experience: All families are a part of history that informs memory, and thus should be captured on film.”
—Baltimore City Paper, March 2005

“Black: A Celebration of a Culture is an exhilarating collection of black & white photographs in this handsome oversize volume . . . The book is aptly named, as it does succeed in vividly portraying and celebrating Black culture.”
—Book News, November 2005

About the Author

Deborah Willis is a photographer and Professor of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. She is a MacArthur Fellow and her most recent publications include Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (co-author Carla Williams) and A Small Nation of People.