The HistoryMakers video oral history with Deborah Willis.

Curator, photographer, and professor Deborah Willis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 5, 1948. Moving to New York, New York in 1980, she became the exhibitions coordinator and curator of Photographs and Prints Division at New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. While working at the Center, Willis published her first book and began exhibiting her own photographs. In 1992, Willis moved to Washington, D.C. and became exhibitions curator at the Smithsonian Institute's Center for African American History and Culture. Eight years later, she received the MacArthur Fellowship. She then joined the faculty of New York University. Author of many books and articles, as well as organized or contributed to countless exhibitions exploring the role of African Americans in front of and behind the lens, her most recent books included The Black Female Body in Photography, with Carla Williams, and Reflections in Black: A History of African American Photographers, 1840-Present.

Adrienne Jones, interviewer.

Recorded New York, New York 2007 June 27.

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