writing & editorial

This page lists selected writing and editorial work with links to selected texts (under construction).

All text © Carla Williams. All Rights Reserved.

editor

exposure, the Journal of the Society for Photographic Education, 2005 – present

Published artists and writers include Glynnis Reed, Chester Higgins, Jr., Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Qiana Mestrich, Jason Hanasik, Tammy Rae Carland, Stephanie Lindsey, Lisa Henry, Stephen Marc, Bridget Cooks, Myra Greene, Deborah Willis, Zoe Strauss, Sheila Pree Bright, Sunil Gupta, Clarissa Sligh, Zanele Muholi, Hanif O’Neil, Cicely Sweed, Kalia Brooks, Bayeté Ross Smith, Jené Watson Aifah, Jordana Moore Saggese, Ifétayo Abdus-Salam, Petrushka Bazin, Benjamin Sloat, Lonnie Graham, Jesus Aguilar, Deirdre Visser, Kristine Maitland, Roshini Kempadoo, Mark Sealy, and Clare Charles Cornell

Available at amazon.com

selected publications

books

Pleasure and Beauty: Self-Portraits 1985 – 1990, San Francisco: 81 Press, 2009.

The Black Female Body: A Photographic History, with Deborah Willis, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, February 2002.

Thurgood Marshall (Journey to Freedom children’s book series), Chanhassen, Minnesota: The Child’s World, 2002.

The Underground Railroad (Journey to Freedom children’s book series), Chanhassen, Minnesota: The Child’s World, 2002.

Photography from 1839 to Today: George Eastman House, Rochester, NY [now titled 1000 Photo Icons], (contributing author), collection catalog, International Museum of Photography and Film at George Eastman House with Taschen America, 1999.

MFA Thesis: Sell It or Sit Down On It: The Black Female Body in French Photography, 1850 – 1890

essays

Interview with Stephen Marc, Passage on the Underground Railroad: Photographs by Stephen Marc, University Press of Mississippi, 2009.

Introduction, Thomas McGovern, Amazing Grace, Parker Publishing: 2009.

Introduction in Dave Jordano, Articles of Faith: African-American Community Churches in Chicago, Center for American Places: 2009.

“Model Bodies,” in Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College: 2008.

Introduction, Family History Memory: Recording African American Life by Deborah Willis, Irvington, New York: Hylas Publishing, 2005.

“Body Baggage,” New York Newsday, February 8, 2004.

Dialogue with Lyle Rexer, Man-ifestations: Photographs of Men, exhibition catalogue, Southeast Museum of Photography at Daytona Beach Community College, 2004.

“Telling Stories, Making (Hi)stories: The Narrative Impulse,” Screenings: Private and Public, exhibition catalogue, Noyes Museum of Art, 2004.

Introduction, First Seen: Portraits of the World’s Peoples, exhibition catalogue, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2004.

“Collecting Memory: Portraiture, Posing, and Desire,” A Century of African American Art: The Paul R. Jones Collection, Rutgers University Press, 2004.

Skin Deep cover “Naked, Neutered, or Noble: Extremes of the Black Female Body and the Problem of Photographic History,” in Kimberly Wallace Sanders, ed., Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Fotophile “Maudelle Bass: An Artist’s Model,” Fotophile: The Journal for Creative Photographers, No. 41, 2002.

“The Black Female Body in Photographs from World’s Fairs and Expositions,” with Deborah Willis, in “Race, Photography, and American Culture,” exposure, volume 33, 1/2, Daytona Beach, Florida: Society for Photographic Education, 2000.

“‘Jake in Transition from Female to Male’” series, or, Through the Mirror and What Clarissa Found There,” Contact Sheet 112, Syracuse: Light Work, 2002.

“Recent Black Photographers,” PhotoPoint Magazine (now defunct), January 17, 2001.

“Hardcore: The Radical Self-Portraiture of Black Female Bodybuilders,” in Picturing the Modern Amazon, New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 2000. Winner, Sixteenth Annual Susan Koppelman Awards Honoring Feminist Editing of Anthologies, Multi-Authored, or Edited Books in American Culture or Popular Cultural Studies of Any Place or Period, 2001.

“So Much Life Here: Portraits at Imperial Courts,” Portraits at Imperial Courts and Eight Women in Jeffersonville, Indiana (Photographs by Dana Lixenberg), Los Angeles: knowtribe and the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, 1999.

“Playing Nature and Culture: Black Women Make Themselves,” exhibition brochure, “Soothsayers: She Who Speaks the Truth,” Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia, January – March, 1999.

“Reading Deeper: The Legacy of Dick and Jane in the Work of Clarissa Sligh,” Image (volume 38 nos. 3 – 4), Rochester, New York: International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Fall/Winter 1995.

“A Prayer For the Living [The Photographs of Fazal Sheikh],” See: A Journal of Visual Culture, Issue 1:2, San Francisco: The Friends of Photography, June 1995.

“The Erotic Image is Naked and Dark,” Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography, edited by Deborah Willis, The New Press: New York, 1994. Winner of Infinity Award, International Center for Photography, New York 1995

contributor

Contributor, The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts, San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2004.

Contributor, Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, second edition, edited by Darlene Clark Hine, to be published.

Contributor, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History: The Black Experience in the Americas, edited by Colin Palmer, New York: Macmillan Reference USA, to be published.

Contributor, Encyclopedia of African American Art and Architecture, edited by Richard Dozier, Richard Powell, Helen Shannon, and Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Grolier Academic Reference, to be published.

“21st: The Journal of Contemporary Photography,” Black & White Magazine 19, June 2002.

Contributor, www.glbtq.com, an online encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer culture.