Reflections in Black ─ A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present

Reflections in Black, the first comprehensive history of black photographers, is Deborah Willis's assemblage of photographs of African American life from 1840 to the present. Willis, a curator of photography at the Smithsonian Institution, has selected nearly 600 photographs, with 487 in duotone and 81 in full color, of which more than 100 images have never before been seen. We are given rich, moving glimpses of African American life, from the last generation of slaves to the urban pioneers of the great migrations of the 1920s, from rare antebellum daguerreotypes of freemen to the courtly celebrants of the Harlem Renaissance, from civil rights martyrs to postmodern photographic artists of the 1990s.

Deborah Willis is curator of exhibitions at the Center for African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.