Interviews, Issue 3

Deborah Willis

Power of Love

Words PLUS MAGAZINE

Photography JODY ROGAC

Deborah Willis is a venerable photographer, author, curator, and historian well-known for her extensive contributions to the history of black photography. Throughout her career, familial love has served as an important inspiration in her own practice and in her scholarly pursuits. She has worked closely with her own son, Hank Willis Thomas, and curated exhibitions centering on the personal histories of black families through photography. She not only dedicated her career to reexamining African-American imagery but also works and mentors young artists and students who are developing their own voices.

PLUS MAGAZINE: I read that you were interested in photography from a young age. Can you pinpoint an exact moment when you realized you wanted to be an artist? Did you experience a sort of epiphany?

DEBORAH WILLIS: When I was growing up, my older sister read a lot and loved fairy tales. Every week from the time I was six until I was 12, we went to the local library in North Philadelphia to select a book to read together. I always looked for books that had photographs in them. And I remember when I was seven years old, I discovered a small book, The Sweet Flypaper of Life by Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes. I was spellbound by the light in those photographs and by the subjects– black women that looked beautiful and like the women in my family.

I was also introduced to photography early on because my dad was obsessed with his Rolleiflex camera and photographed the family often. My mother also had a beauty shop in our house and had a number of picture magazines. I think the epiphany was the culmination of all those things— family photographs, magazine images, and discovery storytelling through photographs.

P: What practitioners from other disciplines have influenced your worldview?

DW: I don’t know where to begin. There are truly so many people who have influenced my life and work, so many people who have shaped my vision as a photographer. In music, Prince and Dakota Staton. When it comes to writers, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison have really impacted my life. Artists like Moreso, Jacob Lawrence, Louise Bourgeois, Faith Ringgold, Emma Amos, and Betye Saar.

P: Over your career, you have published twenty books. When did you start writing? And how did your first book get published?

DW: As an undergraduate student at the Philadelphia College of Art, I noticed that I was reading very few stories that depicted the beauty of black culture and diverse stories of women. And very few stories regarding black photographers working during the first 100 years of the practice of photography. Rather, when I saw black people in photographs, they were always the subject, not the image-maker. I began an effort to reimagine the school curriculum to make it more inclusive. That’s when I began doing research for my first book, Black Photographers: A Bio-Bibliography 1840-1940. For over a year, I compiled a long list of black photographers from this period from research in books, art catalogs, newspapers, and city directories. I wrote an extensive research paper about their works and created short biographical entries about their lives. One of the early photographers I met and interviewed was Gordon Parks. I recall his response to my letter inviting me to interview him the next time I visited New York City. I did and later when I became a photo specialist at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at The New York Public Library I met an editor who asked if I had an interest in writing a book on black photographers. The editor, Richard Newman, read my research paper and followed up within six months with a contract to write a “bio-bibliography on black photographers with illustrations.”

P: What did the exhibitions you curated at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture focus on?

DW: Humanity was the unifying message. I curated an exhibition that centered on the history of activism, family life, and artists who focused on personal memory as a source for their art.

P: Is there a particular book/film/photograph that you consistently look back to?

DW: Two films I love and always find inspiration for my artwork and teaching are Girl in Room 20 (1946) and Mahogany (1975), starring Diana Ross. For literature, John Pultz’s The Body and The Lens: Photography 1839 to Present and Gordon Parks’ Photograph: Segregation Sign, Mobile, Alabama.’

P: What does photography mean to you personally during this moment in time?

DW: I often think about how we are affected by images and especially by images of black people. Toni Morrison wrote: “I am a storyteller and therefore an optimist, a firm believer in the ethical bend of the human heart… from my point of view, your life is already artful – waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.” I connected to this phrase when I read this, and in answering this question, I had to share this as I am an optimist. Growing up in a beauty shop (a woman-only space at that time), I sat at the knee of women listening to the gossip, love stories, work stories, and broken heart stories as I waited for my mother to finish her “heads”. I observed a safe space for history lessons and storytelling. In contextualizing my past and looking at photographs on Instagram, some reflecting on the current political climate while others sharing joy in people’s everyday lives, I see my responsibility as a photographer and professor changing. Since the initial lockdown, I have been asked about my responsibility as an artist, historian, and teacher in discussing photography in the news. Photography has had a major impact on exposing racially motivated murders, the pandemic-caused deaths and illnesses, and the protesters striving for change in the United States and globally. Witnessing world events has become a process of self-reflection for me.