American Families

“I have found no standard art history that refers to any Afro-American artist,” Deborah Willis wrote on November 14, 1973, in a statement about her intention to research the contributions of black photographers working in the United States from 1840 to 1940. After approaching a number of collections and libraries and drawing up a list that included Roy DeCarava, James VanDerZee, and Gordon Parks, she asked herself: “Could these black photographers receive the same recognition their white colleagues received?” This question has animated Willis’s influential books, essays, conferences, and curatorial projects concerning the relationship between African American identity and photography and has brought to the foreground the stories of black people as both makers and subjects of images, from Civil War–era portraits to contemporary photo-based art.

For Willis, a distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at New York University, the image of the family has been central, and deeply personal. Two years after the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, D.C., where the American story is told through an array of objects and images, Willis spoke with the museum’s curator of photography and film, Rhea L. Combs, about the enduring legacy—and political resonance—of the African American family in photographs.

Rhea L. Combs: For decades, you’ve been involved with and dedicated to the life and work of African American image makers. You’ve done groundbreaking research and helped shape and mold some of the brightest minds