Join us at ICP for a conversation between Adraint Bereal, Dr. Deborah Willis, and malaika newsome on the occasion of our latest exhibition, Photobooks USA: 2000-25, featuring Bereal’s The Black Yearbook. Using the impact of the Black Photographer’s Annual as a starting point, Bereal, Willis, and newsome will discuss how frameworks such as the yearbook and family album are employed to share communal histories and its implications for the future of Black storytelling.
This program is being offered both in person at ICP and online, located on NYC's Lower East Side, and online. Tickets to attend the conversation in person are $5 and include access to ICP’s galleries.
About the Book
When photographer Adraint Bereal graduated from the University of Texas, he self-published an impressive volume of portraits, personal statements, and interviews that explored UT’s campus culture and offered an intimate look at the lives of Black students matriculating within a majority white space. Bereal’s work was inspired by his first photo exhibition at the George Washington Carver Museum in Austin, entitled 1.7, that unearthed the experiences of the 925 Black men that made up just 1.7% of UT’s total 52,000 student body.
Now Bereal expands the scope of his original project and visits colleges nationwide, from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to predominantly white institutions to trade schools and more. Rather than dwelling on the monolith of trauma often associated with Black narratives, Bereal is dedicated to using honest dialogue to share stories of true joy and triumph amidst the hardships, prejudices, and internal struggles. Using an exciting and eclectic design approach to accompany the portraits and stories, each individual profile effectively conveys the interviewee’s unique voice, tone, and background.
The Black Yearbook reframes society’s stereotypical perception of higher education by representing and celebrating the wide range of Black experiences on campuses.
About the Speakers
Adraint Khadafhi Bereal (b. 1998) is an artist from Waco, Texas, based in New York. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Design and Creative Technologies, Bereal’s work untangles the nuances of American culture by interrogating and provoking truth to reveal itself. Working across photography, design, and publishing, he examines how systems of representation shape identity. His debut monograph, The Black Yearbook, expanded a student project into a national portrait of Black collegiate life, revealing the emotional and aesthetic vocabularies of a generation navigating visibility and belonging. Bereal’s work is held in the permanent collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and has been exhibited nationally. His upcoming solo exhibition at the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin marks a return to the institution where his practice first took root.
Deborah Willis, Ph.D, is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has affiliated appointments with the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Social & Cultural and the Institute of Fine Arts where she teaches courses on Photography & Imaging, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender. She is also the director of NYU's Center for Black Visual Culture/Institute for African American Affairs. Her research examines photography's multifaceted histories, visual culture, contemporary women photographers and beauty. She received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and was a Richard D. Cohen Fellow in African and African American Art, Hutchins Center, Harvard University; a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, and an Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. Fellow. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received awards from the College Art Association for Writing Art History (2021) and the Outstanding Service Award from the Royal Photographic Society in the UK. She has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African diasporic cultures. Willis is the author of Reflections in Black: A Reframing 1840 to the Present, The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship, Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present; Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty; Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers - 1840 to the Present; Let Your Motto be Resistance – African American Portraits; Family History Memory: Photographs by Deborah Willis; VANDERZEE: The Portraits of James VanDerZee; and co-author of The Black Female Body A Photographic History with Carla Williams; Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery with Barbara Krauthamer; and Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs (both titles a NAACP Image Award Winner)
malaika newsome is the Curatorial Assistant at the International Center of Photography in New York City. She obtained her Masters in Art History and Archaeology from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts (IFA), focusing on African and African Diasporic Art during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She has co-curated projects including the Zora Ilunga Reed’s Intimidation Tactics, the IFA’s Great Hall Exhibition installation by Maia Ruth Lee, Straight Lick as part of “Black Art Sessions” by Ebony Haynes, and Cultivating Collections: Vitreographs, Glass, Works by Black Artists, and Ceramics at Western Carolina University. She has also collaborated with the Atlanta History Center, the High Museum of Art, and MOCA GA.
