February 21–28, 2002

arts picks|books

The Black Female Body

On Feb. 23, the Sande Webster Gallery and Temple University Press will host an event honoring Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, the authors of The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (Temple).

The lavish, oversized book is chock-full of amazing images of black women’s bodies throughout history, ranging from the early 19th century to recent photos by superstar photographers Lyle Ashton Harris and Renee Cox. It’s a gorgeous, remarkable work, full of empowering perspectives about the artistic representation of African-American women.

It’s hard to decide whether this is an important academic and cultural work or a killer coffee table book. Pieces like the "The Yo Mama Series" put it squarely in the former camp. As Cox says, this section shows "a dispassionate representation of women claiming their womanhood and power in the world of art and commerce, white male dominance, and gender." But the pictures — the pictures are amazing, haunting, and abundant, and will have you flipping through the book in idle moments.

I handed the book to a friend who was waiting for me at my apartment; when I was ready to go, 10 minutes later, the book had to be forcibly removed from his hands. "You can’t just give me something like this and expect me to want to put it down!" he whined. Had I told him that Deborah Willis graduated from Temple and the Philadelphia College of Art or that she’d received a MacArthur fellowship and now teaches the history of photography at NYU, I doubt we would have ever gotten out the door.

—Meredith Broussard

Sat., Feb. 23, 3-5 p.m., Sande Webster Gallery, 2018 Locust St., 215-732-8850.