Booksigning and conversation with Deborah Willis in Los Angeles this weekend
Posted on | October 7, 2009 | No Comments
Deborah Willis
POSING BEAUTY
Conversation with the author and book signing
Saturday, October 10, 2009
4pm
ROBERTS & TILTON
5801 Washington Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232
T 323 549 0223
F 323 549 0224
www.robertsandtilton.com
info@robertsandtilton.com
Posing Beauty explores the contested ways in which African and African American beauty have been represented in historical and contemporary contexts through a diverse range of media including photography, film, video, fashion, advertising, and other forms of popular culture such as music and the Internet. Throughout the Western history of art and imagemaking, beauty has been idealized and challenged, and the relationship between beauty and art has become increasingly complex within contemporary art and popular culture. It challenges the relationship between beauty and art by examining the representation of beauty and different attitudes about class, gender, and aesthetics.
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. The book is published by W.W. Norton. 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. Posing Beauty was released in October 2009.
Tags: Anthony Barboza > Bruce Davidson > Carrie Mae Weems > Deborah Willis > Garry Winogrand > Hank Willis Thomas > Kwaku Alston > Lewis Watts > Lorna Simpson
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