On view at 20 Cooper Square and Tisch School of the Arts, “Reflections in Black: A Reframing” traces the Black experience from individuality to collective resilience, presenting photography as both art and social force. Curated by Tisch professor Deborah Willis, the exhibition highlights the resilience and work of historically overlooked Black photographers and their underrepresented influence on art history and cultural memory.
The exhibition, hosted by NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture and Tisch Department of Photography & Imaging, accompanies the 25th anniversary of Willis’s book of a similar name. It honors the visibility of Black photographers while inviting new audiences to witness their cultural impact, with photographs ranging from the 19th century to the present, from daguerreotypes to colored digitals that shape a collective memory and create a living dialogue of the interactions Black people have with themselves, society and their community.
On the right side of the exhibition upon entrance, Russell Frederick’s 2010 piece, “Money, Power, Respect” calls back to hip-hop group The Lox’s debut album, which featured pioneers of the growing genre like DMX and Lil’ Kim. The photo centers three Black women directly under the 135th Street Viaduct in Harlem, Manhattan. The viaduct curves directly above, creating a natural frame.
All subjects’ eyes piercingly stare down the camera, asserting their presence. They wear clothing reminiscent of early hip-hop culture that remains popular today — oversized leather and bomber jackets, bold graphic prints, red lipstick and strong geometric jewelry, all nodding to Black street fashion and Afrocentric pride. Most striking, the beret on top of the right subject’s head recalls the Black Panther Party. The subject’s gazes exude an unflinching confidence during a cultural shift towards openness of creativity at the turn of the decade.
As the exhibit continues, the audience is transported further back in time. “Exhibition in a Box: The Missing Chapter: Black Chronicles,” produced by Autograph ABP, displays portraits reproduced from rare 19th-century photos of African, Caribbean and South Asian people during the Victorian era in Great Britain, unseen for more than 125 years. These portraits offer a unique snapshot of Black lives in the decades following 1839, the birth of photography.
One portrait features a young boy, dressed in a neat three-piece suit and polished shoes, evoking late 19th-century expectations of respectful attire. His left leg crosses over his right as he leans against an upholstered leather back chair. His name is Ndugu M’Hali — renamed Kalulu, the Swahili term for young antelope, by Henry Morton Stanley, a journalist famous for his search of missing explorer David Livingstone and role in the European colonization of Africa.
Though the photograph might appear positive, their relationship represents the power imbalance between a self-interested white man and a young boy given to him as a slave by an Arab merchant. The boy is dressed for someone else, reminding the audience how colonial power has and continues to shape representation. Ndugu is seen as an extension of Stanley, calling back to the usage of Black people as commodities and items. Ndugu passed away at 12, and though we do not know his story in his own words, the photograph offers insight into the positioning of Black subjects through Eurocentric standards.
The exhibition concludes with its largest image, “Untitled (Procession)”, taken by Lyle Ashton Harris in 1998 in collaboration with his brother, Thomas Allen Harris. The photograph stages a communal ceremony where Black bodies become living altarpieces, irreducible to single narratives. In the candlelit foreground, two partially nude figures with shoulders and faces, painted a blinding red, anchor the frame. Dense with figures, some subjects echo an ancient otherworldliness, a presence that feels timeless, while others demand recognition through direct stares or averted gazes. This tension both reflects the historical spotlight and erasure of Black and queer lives. Familial in its nod to queer found families yet timeless in its display of portraiture, the work insists that memory, community and ritual endure together.
“Reflections in Black: A Reframing” resists the cycles of invisibility that have historically defined the representation of Black faces both in photographs and behind cameras. The exhibition brings absence into focus while making presence undeniable. To walk through it is to recognize photography as a living relic.
“Reflections in Black: A Reframing” is on view through October 15 on the third floor of 20 Cooper Square and through December 21 at the NYU Tisch Department of Photography & Imaging building. Admission is free for NYU students.
Contact Jayde Belser at [email protected]