Reflections in Black by Deborah Willis, from the On Photography series , 2020
12 x 10 in (h x w)

"On Photography" is a series of daguerreotypes meditating on books and keepsakes on the subject of "Photography." I borrow the title from Susan Sontag's collection of essays with the same name, published in 1977–the year I was born. Twenty-three years later, at the turn of the century (2000), author and educator Dr. Deborah Willis published, "Reflections in Black: a history of Black photographers, 1840 to the present." We are now in the year 2020, amid a pandemic, an election year, and social movements advocate against police violence towards Black people. Throughout history, Photography has played a role in racial hierarchy, but Photography can also dismantle such 19th and 20th-century ideas of White Hegemony. "Reflection in Black," asks us to see ourselves as intersections of each other's history, as part of black life.

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