Like mother like son.
(Oh my goodness, Hank is right--kinda creepy, kinda cool, this collaboration with his mom, Deb. I like it! Click here to join his mailing list.) Deborah Willis and Hank Willis ThomasProgenyJune 21 – August 31, 2008
Opening Reception
Saturday June 21, 7-10 pm
Our children, our visions, our understandings of our place in society, history, and in the room, all must be communicated to be community. They are there because of us, and yet as soon as they are born they are a potential collaborator in a hopeful walk through expansive futures.
If we try to understand where things come from and demand honest investigation with the gait of our presence, then we will be a part of creating the future. The photograph has long been used as an instrument of memory. Deborah Willis is a mother, photographer, educator, and curator. She has used photography to explore stories about family life.
As a mother of a photographer, she found it both inspiring and amusing that her son, Hank Willis
Thomas, also uses photography to critique stories about family events, however tragic or comedic.
They use memory, text, and images to relive family tales and phrases from the “oral archive” of folk culture and transform them into contemporary images exploring the nuances of memory.
By doing this they show us how we look, using voices we’ve never imagined, conjuring scars we’ve never suffered. And we can grow, and we can change, and the exchange can create new wings. Together we can fly to new heights, where we can see more. And so art can help us see ourselves, by making us see something else. It’s hard to keep moving, especially without knowing where you are going. But if you are always asking where you came from, and channeling who you are into your art, you will have an opportunity to share the moments, the memories, and begin to re-imagine the future. Deborah Willis and Hank Willis Thomas’ work expounds on the notion of understanding humanity.
Wise and energetic, the work invigorates the intimacy of personal history as it echoes through body and thought, gaining strength as it creates new life. These works connect to new perspectives and personal vulnerabilities which grow into a collective strength. By Burt Ritchie
BERNICE STEINBAUM GALLERY
3550 N Miami Ave - Miami, FL 33127
T 305 573 2700 - F 305 573 2722
www.bernicesteinbaumgallery.comValet parking available
Deborah WillisDeborah Willis is a MacArthur, Guggenheim and Fletcher Fellow, and a 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 as well as a curator of African American culture.
Exhibitions of her work include:
From Taboo to Icon, Images of the Black Body, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia;
Regarding Beauty, University of Wisconsin;
Embracing Eatonville, Light Works, Syracuse, NY;
HairStories, Scottsdale Contemporary Art Museum, Scottsdale, AZ;
The Comforts of Home, Hand Workshop Art Center, Richmond, VA, 1999;
Re/Righting History: Counternarratives 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. She has exhibited with the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery since 1995.
Notable projects include
The Black Female Body A Photographic History (with Carla Williams), Temple University Press, Philadephia, 2002; and
A Small Nation of People: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Photographs from the Paris Exposition, Amistad Press, 2003;
Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers - 1840 to the Present, New York: W.W. Norton;
Visual Journal: Photography in Harlem and DC in the Thirties and Forties, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1996;
Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography, The New Press, New York, NY, 1994; and
VANDERZEE: The Portraits of James VanDerZee, Harry Abrams Publishing, New York, NY, 1993.
Hank Willis ThomasHank Thomas received a BFA in photography and Africana studies from New York University in 1998. As a visual artist and a writer, he is interested in notions of identity perception, commodity culture, and the impact of violence in African American communities. His photographs have been published in numerous books, including
Reflections in Black: A History of African American Photographers (W. W. Norton, 2000);
25 Under 25 (Power House, 2003); and
Black: A Celebration of Culture (Hylas Publishing, 2004), and his work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally.
Thomas graduated from CCA with dual degrees: an MFA in photography and an MA in visual criticism. His public commissions of 2007 include:
The Truth is I am You, at the University of California in San Francisco, and
Along the Way, at Oakland International Airport in Oakland, California. Film works include
Along the Way, with the ©ause Collective, and
Winter in America, made in collaboration with Kambui Olujimi. His work has also been screened in the Sundance Film Festival: New Frontiers Category.
Labels: Deborah Willis, exhibitions, Hank Willis Thomas
