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Deborah Willis    

Professor & Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts

Deborah Willis is a photographer and writer in search of beauty. As an author and curator, Deborah Willis's pioneering research has focused on cultural histories envisioning the black body, women and gender. She is a celebrated photographer, acclaimed historian of photography, MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow, and University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

As an artist and photographer, Willis is represented by Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in Miami and Charles Guice Contemporary in Berkeley, California. Her exhibitions have included "Progeny," "Regarding Beauty," "Deborah Willis: Tied to Memory," "Deborah Willis."

Willis received the NAACP Image Award in 2014 for her co-authored book Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery (with Barbara Krauthamer) and in 2015 for the documentary Through a Lens Darkly, inspired by her book Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present.

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