The first of three thematic sections, Constructing a Pose, considers the interplay between the historical and the contemporary, between self-representation and imposed representation, and the relationship between subject and photographer. The second theme, Body and Image, questions the ways in which our contemporary understanding of beauty has been constructed and framed through the body. The last section, Modeling Beauty and Beauty Contests, invites a deeper reading of beauty, its impact on mass culture and individuals and how the display of beauty affects the ways in which we see and interpret the world and ourselves.

Posing Beauty explores contemporary understandings of beauty by framing the notion of aesthetics, race, class, and gender within art, popular culture, and political contexts. Photographers include Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, Hank Willis Thomas, Bruce Davidson, Kwaku Alston, Anthony Barboza, Garry Winogrand, Lewis Watts, among others.



Named among the 100 Most Important People in Photography by American Photography Magazine, Dr. Deborah Willis is Chair and Professor of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, where she also has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies.  A 2005 Guggenheim and Fletcher Fellow, a 2000 MacArthur Fellow, 1996 Recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Award, and an artist, she is one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curators of African American culture. Among her notable projects are Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers - 1840 to the Present, A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. DuBois and African American Portraits of Progress, The Black Female Body in Photography, Barack Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs, and Let Your Motto be Resistance.  


Deborah Willis

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

Published by W.W. Norton

Hardcover; 280 pages

$49.95

Available October 5, 2009

ISBN-10: 0393066967

ISBN-13: 978-0393066968

Roberts & Tilton is located on Washington Boulevard, between La Cienega Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue.  Parking is available on the street and at the Dunn Edwards parking lot, located 1/2 block east of the gallery.

For additional information, please contact Lauren Kabakoff at lauren@robertsandtilton.com

or 323.549.0223.