If there is a through line in this vast, cosmic art history, it is Willis herself. Growing up in Philadelphia, she remembers: ​“In my neighbourhood, there were Black photojournalists and my mom had a beauty shop so I grew up looking at Ebony, Jet, and Life magazine. I was curious why they were all missing from the history books, and I felt it was important these names needed to be known.”

In true DIY fashion, Willis poured through the Black newspapers for photo credits, and began reaching out, the research going on to become her PhD dissertation project before finding form as a groundbreaking art history book and exhibition. ​“This experience has made me a better listener,” Willis says. ​“When I was working on the book in the ​’90s, I used to listen to a lot of the photographers, who were in their 70s, 80s, and 90s then like Gordon Parks, Morgan and Marvin Smith, and Moneta Sleet Jr.; they were visionaries and they listened to my young mind interested in documenting their lives.”

Today, Willis is in the position to raise up the next generation of photographers. As University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she has stood at the centre of the medium’s reinvention in the digital age, as doors once shuttered to Black artists have come unhinged. Looking back over the past 25 years, Willis marvelled at the proliferation of visual thinking among her students, friends, colleagues, and peers, absorbing diasporic perspectives of beauty, identity, and migration.

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