Caught Melvin van Peebles at the Metropolitan Room in Manhattan last night with his band “Laxative”. It was really great to see an old friend doing what he does very well…entertaining…and loving every drop of it!! Melvin was truly great …and having a lot of fun at the same time! And so was the band. Obviously highly tuned to Melvin’s iconic style they seemed also to be intimately familiar with Melvin’s musical tastes. Familiar melodies and hilarious moments from some of Melvin’s Broadway Shows delighted the audience and proved as timeless as the old guy himself.
In her new book ‘Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty’ Debora Willis explores historical perceptions of beauty and desire through artistic and ethnographic imagery and the role individual photographers play in constructing ways of seeing. Willis states: “Beginning in the 1970s, exhibitions and publications revised our understanding of the multiple histories of photography and shaped our ideas about the photographers themselves as well as about the way we consume images.”
The book includes full-page illustrations of works by more than fifty internationally recognized photographers including Lisette Model, Imogen Cunningham, Lewis Wickes Hine, Bruce Davidson, Cecil Beaton, Nan Goldin, André Kertész, Lee Friedlander, Lorna Simpson, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol and Carrie Mae Weems. The critically acclaimed exhibition of photographs curated by Deborah Willis and upon which the book is based is now on view at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Washington.
Recent critical reviews and comments on the exhibition include:
BACK COVER
“Willis was given full access to the Henry’s collection and unearthed works that are not often—or ever—shown’, according to Sylvia Wolf, the director of the Henry. Wolf explains that Willis imparted a new sense of energy at the Henry and her curatorial skills allow viewers to change their associations with pieces through context and proximity. Claire Reiner,Vanguard Seattle
Photography is a relatively new medium, but its ability to accurately capture its subject in an instant has perhaps forever changed conceptions of beauty and our relation to images. Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty, the newest exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery explores changing notions of beauty through fashion and photography.
The exhibition brims with icons of 20th-century photography:Barbara Morgan’s Martha Graham: Letter to the World (1940), with the dancer swooping, wrist to forehead, in a half-moon swirl of skirt; André Kertész’s gleeful woman performing a solo couch tango in the 1926 Satiric Dancer, Paris; Richard Avedon’s 1955 portrait of Truman Capote—sunglasses on, bowtie askew, arms spread, and interminably full of himself. Sheila Farr, Seattle Met Magazine
Deborah Willis presents the exhibition to the Seattle Press and Media Art Critics
Deborah Willis is a contemporary artist, photographer, curator, photographic historian, author, and educator. Among other awards and honors she has received, she was a 2000 MacArthur Fellow (aka the Genius Grant). Named among the 100 Most Important People in Photography by American Photography Magazine. Dr. Deborah Willis is Chair and Professor of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, where she also has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies.
Deb Willis meets with Seattle area press and media art critics to conduct a review and walkthrough of her new exhibition “Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty” at the Henry Art Gallery March 1 to September 13, 2013.
Is beauty something inherent or is it embodied?
Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty challenges conventional perspectives on beauty and reveals why the camera remains a powerful device for exploring how we see oters and view ourselves.
Art Critics and members of the Seattle press corps – Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times, Susan Platt, Art and Politics Now, Saura Dannen, Seattle Met Magazine Arts Editor, Brian Miller, Seattle Weekly, Laura Valiente, Seattle Center and Tracey Wickersham, Visit Seattle join Deb Willis for a walkthrough and review of her new exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Washington.
This exhibition brings together a juxtapositon of new and unknown works that offers a cross-cultural read on beauty through portraiture, documentary and constructed images, and fashion photography from the 19th to the 21st centuries.
Through photographical and video imagery culled from the collections of Henry Art Gallery and the University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, audiences will explore historical and cultural perceptions of idealized beauty, gender and identity, and desire.
Deb discusses close-up view of rare fashion design documents.
Henry Art Gallery entrance to the Exhibition ” Out of Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty”
In this exhibition portraits, new-media art, and other photographic imagery focus on aesthetics and the framing of beauty and difference in the human form. The exhibition invites visitors to conduct a visual reading of the portrait within the context of video and ethnographic, commercial, and art photography. In this context, photographs and digital imagery mediate between idealization and imagination.
Deb Willis reviews exhibits with Henry Gallery Patrons
Working from the significant photographic holdings of the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery, and the University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, Deb Willis examines shifting gender attitudes that emerged in work by women photographers such as Gertrude Käsebier and Diane Arbus. Willis discusses ethnographic ideologies underpinning the work of Edward Sheriff Curtis and Fred E. Miller who worked with Native American subjects, as well as the framing and reframing of images of black people in the work of Samuel Montague Fassett and Carrie Mae Weems.
Deborah Willis (far right), the curator of the exhibition at the Henry, “Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty”, discusses the exhibition with moderater and Henry’s Director, Sylvia Wolf (center), and arts, culture, and media professional Erika Dalya Massaquoi (left).
Additionally, the effects of fashion and desire on the imaging of beauty are examined in the work of such artists as Don Wallen, Janieta Eyre, and Jan Saudek. The book includes full-page illustrations of works by more than fifty internationally recognized photographers including Lisette Model, Imogen Cunningham, Lewis Wickes Hine, Bruce Davidson, Cecil Beaton, Nan Goldin, André Kertész, Lee Friedlander, Lorna Simpson, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol.
This exhibition and the associated book honors and acknowledges these striking collections and their collecting patterns since their inception.
Deb Willis is a contemporary artist, photographer, curator, photographic historian, author, and educator. Named among the 100 Most Important People in Photography by American Photography Magazine, Dr. Deb Willis is one of the nation’s leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture.
Deb is a 2000 MacArthur Fellow (aka the Genius Grant), a 2005 Guggenheim
DEBORAH WILLIS “It’s good to have a candy man!” 2010
and Fletcher Fellow, and a 1996 Recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Award . Deb Willis is also Chair and Professor of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, where she holds an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies.
![Deb Willis meets with Seattle area media Art Critics to conduct a review and walkthrough of her new exhibition "Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty"](https://i0.wp.com/www.theactivescreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/deb-answers-questions-from-media-critics1.jpg?resize=500%2C281)
![Deborah Willis (far right), the curator of the exhibition at the Henry, "Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty", discusses the exhibition with moderater and Henry’s Director, Sylvia Wolf (center), and arts, culture, and media professional Erika Dalya Massaquoi (left).](https://i0.wp.com/www.theactivescreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/deb-sylvia-and-erika.jpg?resize=540%2C300)
