Deborah Willis

Bio:
Deb Willis has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies. She was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and Fletcher Fellow, and a 2000 MacArthur Fellow, as well as the 1996 recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation award. She has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture. Exhibitions of her work include: A Sense of Place, Frick, University of Pittsburgh, 2005; Regarding Beauty, University of Wisconsin, 2003; Embracing Eatonville, Light Works, Syracuse, NY, 2003-4; Hair Stories, Scottsdale Contemporary Art Museum, Scottsdale, AZ 2003-4; The Comforts of Home, Hand Workshop Art Center, Richmond, VA, 1999; Re/Righting History: Counter narratives by Contemporary African-American Artists, Katonah Museum of Art, 1999; Memorable Histories and Historic Memories, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1998; Cultural Baggage, Rice University, Houston, TX, 1995. Her curated Exhibitions include: Engulfed by Katrina: Photographs before and After the Storm, Nathan Cummings Foundation, and Imagining Families—Images and Voices and Reflections in Black.

I came across Deborah Willis while looking at some of Lorie Novak's work. Willis was mentioned in an article in "Scholar and Feminist Online", which discussed Lorie Novak's work. Her work is part of a world wide web exhibit created by Novak, called Collected Visions. Willis's "The Familial Gaze" was part of this exhibit.
The second picture above is what caught my eye. I have come across huge group of artists who work mainly with concepts of nostalgia family history. Deborah Willis's style and concept reminds of Cedric Smith's work, an artist I researched last semester for senior portfolio.

"Smith’s color photographs, all modestly sized and priced, feature the same sort of old-fashioned studio portraiture of black subjects, each vintage print pointedly re-photographed in front of a Southern landscape: A nervous-looking young man in his Sunday best is placed at a church’s entry, a startled child finds herself perched atop a fat cotton boll." (Art and Antiques)

Cedric Smith: http://cedricsmith.com/html/homepage.htm

I am very interested in how different artists explore family history and memory. Each artist has their own style and concept. They go anout reaching a common goal, but work in very diferent ways.