PHOTOGRAPHY

A historian and a photographer from a family of photographers, Deborah Willis is one of the foremost authorities on African-American photography. In her new volume, Posing Beauty: African-American Images, 1890s to the Present (W.W. Norton, $49.95), she explores the concept of black beauty and how it has been presented in the past century. The book’s first portraits show how careful photographers were to pose their subjects in dignified ways, to counter stereotypical images fostered by Jim Crow laws and minstrel shows. As society changed, the images reflected that, first in ads for goods directed at black consumers, and then in representations of beauty, as blacks entered beauty pageants and become models for magazines like Ebony and Jet. When black photographers offered new images, eventually the larger society followed and began to change their portrayals of the black community, as can be seen in work by white photographers like Eve Arnold, Gary Winogrand, and Annie Leibovitz—though that doesn’t mean they erased all the stereotypes. Deb Morris