Description:
TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
The acclaimed collection of Black photography, now featuring more than one hundred photographs from twenty-first-century artists, fundamentally redefines our understanding of American history.
"If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, then Deborah Willis has given us nothing less than an epic history of Homeric proportions. Taken together, Willis's magnificent gathering of images accompanied by her powerful narrative overturns many common ideas about black life during the last century and a half, and in so doing rewrites American history."--Robin D. G. Kelley, from the Foreword
Brief description: Kalia Brooks is a Program Officer at Fundamental Philanthropy, where she stewards grantmaking for The Hearthland Foundation--an organization that champions justice, equity, and connection through the power of art and storytelling. With a background spanning arts, advocacy, and nonprofit leadership, Brooks supports artists and creative organizations working at the intersection of culture and social change. She leads strategy, manages diverse grant portfolios, and cultivates relationships across the visual arts ecosystem to amplify narratives that reimagine our shared democracy. Grounded in equity and driven by curiosity, Brooks brings a curator's eye and a strategist's mind to her work--valuing imagination, collaboration, and creative risk. Whether developing new funding pathways or convening artists and cultural leaders, she is committed to fostering a vibrant, inclusive arts landscape where visionary ideas can thrive, and communities can connect.
Review Quotes: Like the original, the new edition catalogs and contextualizes the work of an exhaustive number of photographers, following their contributions through the technological and aesthetic evolution of the medium, from pre-Civil War daguerreotype portraiture and the tintypes of Reconstruction to the rise of street photography in Harlem and the photojournalism of the Civil Rights era to the current age of conceptual art...With so many institutions threatened by a whitewashing of history, and when AI has made it easier than ever to distort likenesses into crude, viral caricatures, Reflections feels as relevant as ever in its effort to expand and preserve our collective memory. That's the duty of all artists, Willis says: 'All artists are exploring ways to create and respond to [these] fraught and aesthetic issues. Black photographers are doing the same.'--Nicole Pezold "Arts Digest"