Deborah Willis

Deborah Willis, Ph.D. (b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an historian, accomplished photographer and an author. Willis’s work has been instrumental in advancing the study of Black aesthetics in photography. She is currently the University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. In November 2024, Willis was appointed chair of the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Willis earned her B.F.A. degree in photography from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1975. She received an M.F.A. in photography from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1980 and a Ph.D. from George Mason University in 2002. After graduating from Pratt Institute, Willis became the curator of photography and prints and the exhibitions coordinator at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, curating collections that included scenes from black history, and portraits of famous African Americans. In 1985, she published her first book, Black Photographers, 1840-1940: An Illustrated Bio-bibliography, featuring the works of more than three hundred photographers, followed by An Illustrated Bio-Bibliography of Black Photographers, 1940-1988.

Willis has received numerous awards including the International Center of Photography Award in Writing (1995); the MacArthur Fellowship (2000); the Guggenheim Fellowship (2005); CAA Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art (2021); the Robert Mapplethorpe Photographer In Residency at the American Academy in Rome and the Don Tyson Prize for the Advancement of American Art (2022). Her work has been featured in various exhibitions across the country at institutions including the Smithsonian, the Woodmere Art Museum, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery and Anderson Ranch in Aspen. Willis’ work is in the collections of the Montclair Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Sugar Hill Museum of Art and Storytelling, among others.