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:
“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 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.
