Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present Deborah Willis. Norton, $49.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-393-06696-8
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. (Nov.)
