Talks & Conversations

Artist Talk: Carla Williams in Conversation with Deborah Willis

Part of Arnold Newman Lecture Series on Photography
Carla Williams, Untitled (curlers) #1.2, 1984–1985, gelatin silver print, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 2024.26.1

To celebrate opening weekend of Photography and the Black Arts Movement: 1955-1985, join us for a conversation between exhibition artist Carla Williams and exhibition co-curator Deborah Willis, university professor and chair of the department of photography and imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts and director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University. Their discussion will explore Williams’ creative work as an artist, scholar, writer, and editor, which has championed images of and by Black women. Williams is known for intensely personal self-portraits, like Untitled (Curlers) #1.2 on view in the exhibition, which is the first to consider photography’s impact on a cultural and aesthetic movement that celebrated Black history, identity, and beauty.

Carla Williams (born 1965, Los Angeles) earned her BA in photography from Princeton University and her MA and MFA from the University of New Mexico. As a child of Hollywood, Williams grew up with her own portfolio of headshots. Aged out of acting, Williams started making self-portraits at age 17 using mostly Polaroid 4x5 and instant 35mm film formats. Made in private between 1984 and 1999 and kept mostly to herself for more than 30 years, these images were collected into a monograph titled Tender, which won the First PhotoBook Award at the Paris Photo-Aperture PhotoBook Awards in 2023. She also edited photo journals and cowrote The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (2002) with Deborah Willis. Williams served as a curator of photography at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and was a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In 2014, she moved to New Orleans and opened a store specializing in vintage material by Black artists. Her honors include the International Center for Photography's Infinity Award (1994) and the Guggenheim Fellowship (2025). 
 

About Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985

Uniting around civil rights and freedom movements of the 1960s and 1970s, many visual artists, poets, playwrights, musicians, photographers, and filmmakers expressed hope and dignity through their art. These creative efforts became known as the Black Arts Movement.  

Photography was central to the movement, attracting all kinds of artists—from street photographers and photojournalists to painters and graphic designers. This expansive exhibition presents 150 examples tracing the Black Arts Movement from its roots to its lingering impacts, from 1955 to 1985. Explore the bold vision shaped by generations of artists including Billy Abernathy, Romare Bearden, Kwame Brathwaite, Roy DeCarava, Doris Derby, Emory Douglas, Barkley Hendricks, Barbara McCullough, Betye Saar, and Ming Smith.  

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A young boy with pink and tan-colored skin stands next to a seated woman with an ashen white face, and both look out at us in this vertical portrait painting. The scene is created with broad areas of mottled color in rust and coral red, pale pink, lilac purple, ivory white, and shades of tawny brown. The eyes of both people are heavily outlined with large, dark pupils. To our right, the woman’s pale, oval face is surrounded by a muted, mint-green cloth that covers her hair and wraps across her neck. Her eyes are outlined with charcoal gray, and her heavy lids shaded under arched brows with smoky, plum purple. She has a straight nose, and her burgundy-red lips are closed in a straight line. Her long, rose-pink dress is lavender purple below the knee, and is scrubbed with darker pink strokes across her lap. Her sleeves are tan on the upper arms and cream white on the forearm, over two blush-pink forms that represent her hands resting on her thighs. Along the top of her shoulders, her dress is terracotta red. A rectangular, fog-gray form behind her could be a chair or a half-wall, the top edge of which is higher to our right of her head. To our left, the boy has dark brown, short hair over putty pink, protruding ears. The area between his eyelid and arched brow is filled in with chocolate brown, giving his staring eyes a hooded look. His jawline, chin, and lips are outlined with dark brown. His khaki-brown, knee-length coat has pale, rose-pink sleeves and a black collar. An area of pale, ice blue could be a kerchief or high-collared shirt, and he wears fawn-brown pants. One of his slippers is coffee brown and the other, closer to the woman, is slate gray. He holds a loosely painted, pale, turquoise-blue object in one hand at his waist. The pair are situated against a background painted in areas of coral, ruby, crimson, and wine red. Two vertical, concrete-gray strips behind the boy and woman could be columns. The floor along the bottom edge of the painting is pale pink.

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