Carla Williams (photographer)
Carla Williams | |
|---|---|
Williams in 2013 | |
| Born | 1965 (age 60–61) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater |
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| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (2025) |
| Website | carlajwilliams |
Carla Williams (born 1965) is an American photographer. She worked as a photography curator and professor before opening at store in New Orleans. She was noticed by Paul Sepuya after posting her old photographs on Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2023, she published her first monograph Tender and held her first solo exhibition Circa 1985. She is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography.
Biography
Carla Williams was born in 1965 in Los Angeles,[1] daughter of Evelyn and Wendell Williams.[2] She was raised at a Catholic church during her youth[3] and attended a Catholic school,[4] with her childhood experiences also "infused with New Orleans culture".[5] Williams obtained a BA in Photography from Princeton University,[1] where she created 72 self-portraits for her BFA thesis exhibition.[6][3] Her advisor[7] Emmet Gowin called her BFA work "the best thesis show he'd seen" during his teaching career.[6] She later moved to the University of New Mexico, where she obtained her MA and MFA.[1]
Concerned about the commercial nature of art, Williams started as a photography curator,[7] working at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (1992-1993), J. Paul Getty Museum (1997-1999) and the College of Santa Fe's Thaw Art History Center (1999-2002).[2] In 2002, she and Deborah Willis wrote The Black Female Body: A Photographic History.[6] After working as a photography instructor at Pomona College (1994) and as an adjunct professor of history of photography and photography at the College of Santa Fe's Marion Center for Photographic Arts (2001-2002),[2] she worked as a photography professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology until 2013.[7][5] She also served as a board member for the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, a publications committee advisor for the Society for Photographic Education, and arts advisory committee member for the Museum of the African Diaspora.[2] In 2016, she started Material Life, a New Orleans store that sells African-American art.[5]
Williams said of her decision to create self-portraits at Princeton: "I was a young Black woman. I was curious to see my likeness. I was taking Peter Bunnell's History of Photography course, and I wasn't represented in what I was seeing."[7] Another inspiration she cited in her interest in self-portraits was the way "self-portraiture collapsed the relationship between the photographer and the subject" instead of having a third-party set up the camera.[3] She has also cited Alfred Stieglitz's photographs of Georgia O'Keeffe; Catholic art; "images that male photographers made of their wives, girlfriends and muses"; Playboy and Penthouse spreads; and Cindy Sherman among her inspirations.[3][7]
In 2023, Higher Pictures hosted Williams' first solo exhibition, Circa 1985, where she remade her thesis self-portraits.[3][6] The same year, TBW Books released Tender, Williams' first monograph which then won the year's Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award for First PhotoBook.[6] The book and gallery had come to fruition after Paul Sepuya learned about her old photographs on Instagram (where she posted them while her store closed during the COVID-19 pandemic) and showed them to TBW founder Paul Schiek.[7] In 2025, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography.[8]
Williams's work was included in the 2025 exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 at the National Gallery of Art. [9]
Personal
Originally living in Rochester, Williams moved to New Orleans because "it really had a hold on me", moving to an Eastlake style house in the 7th Ward.[5] She owns a dog named Ferdinand.[5] She is lesbian.[4]
In 2002, Williams published two books for The Child's World: Thurgood Marshall: 1908-1993 and The Underground Railroad.[2]
Works
References
- ^ a b c "Carla Williams & Carolyn Drake". PhotoWork Foundation. Retrieved February 5, 2026.
- ^ a b c d e "Williams, Carla 1965-". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved February 6, 2026.
- ^ a b c d e Gyarkye, Lovia (December 7, 2023). "On View: A Photographer Visits With Her Younger Self". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 5, 2026.
- ^ a b Williams, Carla (October 22, 2004). "Carla Williams Interview" (PDF). Lesbian Photography Project (Interview). Interviewed by Lindsey Peregoff.
- ^ a b c d e Bruno, R. Stephanie (July 7, 2017). "Wow! Look inside Carla Williams' unique double-turned-single 7th Ward home". NOLA.com. Retrieved February 6, 2026.
- ^ a b c d e Curl, Julia (November 28, 2023). "Carla Williams Takes Ownership of the Gaze". Hyperallergic. Retrieved February 5, 2026.
- ^ a b c d e f "Photographer Carla Williams '86's Thesis Is Back in the Spotlight". Princeton Alumni Weekly. Retrieved February 5, 2026.
- ^ "Carla Williams". Guggenheim Fellowships. Retrieved February 5, 2026.
- ^ Brookman, Philip; Willis, Deborah (2025). Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985. New Haven London: Yale University Press. p. 264. ISBN 9780300283501.
- ^ Cooks, Bridget R. (2003). "Review of The Black Female Body: A Photographic History". African American Review. 37 (2/3): 468–469. doi:10.2307/1512346. ISSN 1062-4783. JSTOR 1512346.
- ^ Farrington, Lisa E. (2003). "Review of The Black Female Body: A Photographic History". Woman's Art Journal. 24 (1): 40–42. doi:10.2307/1358809. ISSN 0270-7993. JSTOR 1358809.
- ^ Keeling, Kara (2003). "Review of THE BLACK FEMALE BODY: A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY". The Black Scholar. 33 (2): 50–53. ISSN 0006-4246. JSTOR 41069026.
- ^ Shaw, Gwendolyn DuBois (2003). "Taking Back the Camera". The Women's Review of Books. 20 (12): 1–4. doi:10.2307/4024209. ISSN 0738-1433. JSTOR 4024209.
- ^ Sivanarayanan, Anushiya (2005). "Review of The Black Female Body: A Photographic History". Callaloo. 28 (4): 1108–1113. ISSN 0161-2492. JSTOR 3805593.