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5 African American Photographers

Welcome to our 17th #aroundtheworld! Today, we will be discussing 5 phenomenal Black photographers. Enjoy our article on Carrie Mae Weems, Deborah Wills, Ming Smith, Coreen Simpson, and Renne Cox. Enjoy!



Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems was born in Portland, Oregon in 1953, the second of seven children to Carrie Polk and Myrlie Weems. She began participating in dance and street theater in 1965. At the age of 16, she gave birth to her first and only child, a girl she named Faith C. Weems. Later that year, she moved out of her parents’ home and soon relocated to San Francisco to study modern dance. Now considered one of the most influential contemporary American artists, Carrie Mae Weems has investigated family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, and the consequences of power. Determined as ever to enter the picture—both literally and metaphorically—Weems has sustained an on-going dialogue within contemporary discourse for over thirty years. During this time, Carrie Mae Weems has developed a complex body of art employing photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video.


Deborah Wills

Deborah Willis (born February 5, 1948) is a contemporary African-American artist, photographer, curator of photography, photographic historian, author, and educator. Among her awards and honors, she was a 2000 MacArthur Fellow. She is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University. As an author and curator, Deb Willis's pioneering research has focused on cultural histories envisioning the black body, women and gender. She is a celebrated photographer, an acclaimed historian of photography, and a MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow.


Ming Smith

Ming Smith was born in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in Columbus, Ohio. After graduating from Howard University in 1973, she moved to New York City, where she found work modeling. While in New York she met photographer Anthony Barboza, who was an early influence on her later career. Smith’s association with the photography collective Kamoinge was significant in shaping her as an artist. Technically experimental, she has an intuitive and fluid style: her signatures include double-exposed prints, slow shutter speeds, and collaging and painting over her images. Influenced by Gordon Parks and Diane Arbus, Smith prefers to take candid street shots, but she manages to find magic in the mundane. She is featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2020.


Coreen Simpson

Simpson was born in Brooklyn and was raised along with her brother by a foster family. She completed Samuel J. Tilden High School in the same city and moved on to take courses at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of Design, studying with Frank Stewart, at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1977. While an artist-in-residence at Light Work, Simpson was able to work on a group of photographs that combine two of her interests, jewelry and photographic portraiture. She printed a series of photographs that document the jewelry of Arthur Smith, a jewelry designer and maker who died in 1983. The images often show the pieces being worn and reflect some of the ideas found in other bodies of her work such as the 'B' Boy series. Plans are to publish the photographs in a book about Smith. The 'B' Boys and a group of photographs on New York City nightlife are some of the images that reflect Simpson's interest in the way people decorate themselves. Her earlier work often imitated the sparkle of jewels by the application of paint onto the surface of the print. She has moved away from the manipulated photograph to a more documentary style of photographing self decoration. She describes her jewelry pieces as large and dominant when worn. Some of her recent pieces are large enough to be considered sculpture and have been exhibited in galleries.


Renee Cox

Renee Cox (born October 16, 1960) is a Jamaican-American artist, photographer, lecturer, political activist and curator. Her work is considered a key part of the feminist art movement in the United States. Among the best known of her provocative works are Queen Nanny of the Maroons, Raje and Yo Mama's Last Supper, which exemplify her Black Feminist politic. In addition, her work has provoked conversations at the intersections of cultural work, activism, gender, and African Studies. As a specialist in film and digital portraiture, Cox uses light, form, digital technology, and her own signature style to capture the identities and beauty within her subjects and herself. Renee Cox is one of the most controversial African-American artists working today using her own body, both nude and clothed to celebrate black womanhood and criticize a society she often views as racist and sexist.



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