Posing Beauty > W.W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Posing Beauty

The chair of the Photography Department and a University Professor at New York University, Deborah Willis is a MacArthur, Guggenheim and Fletcher Fellow. She is the author of Reflections in Black (ISBN 978 0 393 32280 4).

Posing Beauty

African American Images from the 1890s to the Present

Deborah Willis

As a student in the 1970s, Deborah Willis found that images of black beauty did not exist in the larger culture. Determined to redress this imbalance, Willis started a lifelong quest that has become Posing Beauty. Subjects such as Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker illuminate the past; Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali take us to the civil rights era; Denzel Washington, Lil’ Kim and Michelle Obama represent the present. However, Willis does not only celebrate the famous but also recovers a world many never knew existed.
Featuring the work of more than one hundred photographers, Posing Beauty challenges our assumptions about what it means to be "beautiful".

Deborah Willis' previous book Reflections in Black (ISBN 978 0 393 32280 4) was widely praised, including in the Independent on Sunday, which said "Deborah Willis tells this story better than it has ever been told, or shown, before."

"...beautiful and thought provoking portraits."
Black and White Photography

"...this amazing collection..."
International Herald Tribune

"Full of stunning images...this is an excellent collection of reportage and street photography that traces the highs and lows of black culture in America over the past 120 years."
Amateur Photographer

"...monumental contribution to contemporary American culture..."
The New York Times

October 2009 • £35.00 • ISBN 978 0 393 06696 8 • 288pp • 229 x 305mm • 242 duotone photographs; 40 pages of five-colour photographs
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February 2012 • Paper • £25.00 • ISBN 978 0 393 34059 4 • 280pp • 229 x 305mm • 242 duotone photographs; 40 pages of five-colour photographs
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