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Author Talk: Kamala

Deborah Willis & Kevin Merida talk Harris' historic campaign

Dr. Deborah Willis and Kevin Merida discuss photojournalism’s power and the historic Presidential campaign of the nation's first female vice president.

Curated by Deborah Willis and Kevin Merida, "KAMALA: Her Historic, Joyful, and Auspicious Sprint to the White House" is a visually captivating book featuring nearly 150 vibrant photographs that capture the joy, challenges, and triumphs of Harris’s campaign.

This program is supported by the DC Public Library Foundation. Register and attend for your chance to get a free copy of the book courtesy of the DC Public Library Foundation. Limited quantities available.

For reasonable accommodations, please contact the Center for Accessibility at 202-727-2142 or DCPLaccess@dc.gov. For ASL or tactile interpretation, please allow at least seven (7) days notice.

Meet the Authors

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 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).

She lectures widely and has co-edited books Women and Migration(s); authored many papers and articles on a range of subjects including The Image of the Black in Western Art, Gordon Parks Life Works, Steidl, Volume II; America’s Lens in Double Exposure: Through the African American Lens; “Photographing Between the Lines: Beauty, Politics and the Poetic Vision of Carrie Mae Weems,” in Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography & Video, and “Malick Sidibé: The Front of the Back View” in Self: Portraiture and Social Identity.  Professor Willis is editor of Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography; and Black Venus 2010: They Called Her "Hottentot", which received the Susan Koppelman Award for the Best Edited Volume in Women's Studies by the Popular Culture/American Culture Association in 2011.  

Exhibitions of her artwork include: Monument Lab Staying Power, Philadelphia; 100Years/100Women, Park Avenue Armory,  In Conversation: Visual Meditations on Black Masculinity, African American Museum Philadelphia; MFON: Black Women Photographers, African American Museum Philadelphia; In Pursuit of Beauty, Express Newark, Rutgers University, Newark, “Mirror Mirror” Express Newark, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ; A Sense of Place, Frick, University of Pittsburgh; Regarding Beauty, University of Wisconsin, Interventions in Printmaking: Three Generations of African-American Women, Allentown Museum of Art; A Family Affair, University of South Florida; I am Going to Eatonville, Zora Neale Hurston Museum; Afrique: See you, see me; Progeny: Deborah Willis +Hank Willis Thomas. Gantt Center.

Professor Willis’s curated exhibitions include: “Framing Moments in the KIA” Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts, Framing Beauty at the Henry Art Gallery; "Reframing Beauty: Intimate Moments" at Indiana University; “Migrations & Meanings in Art” Maryland Institute of the Arts; “Convergence”, Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans; “Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty,” Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, “Visualizing Emancipation,” Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, “Gordon Parks: 100 Moments,” Schomburg Center; “Posing Beauty  Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits” at the International Center of Photography and, “Social in Practice: The Art of Collaboration”, Nathan Cummings Foundation.

In addition to making art, writing and teaching, she has served as a consultant to museums, archives, and educational centers. She has appeared and consulted on media projects including the documentary films such as Through A Lens Darkly, Question Bridge: Black Males, a transmedia project, which received the ICP Infinity Award 2015, and American Photography, PBS Documentary. Since 2006 she has co-organized thematic conferences exploring “Black Portraitures” focusing on imaging the black body. She holds honorary degrees from Pratt Institute and the Maryland Institute, College of Art. She is currently researching two projects on photography and the black arts movement and artists reimaging history. Deborah Willis was appointed Board Chair of the Andy Warhol Foundation and elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Kevin Merida is an independent journalist, storyteller and media executive. He is a contributing essayist to The Washington Post Opinions section, and a strategic adviser to the Academy Award-winning Breakwater Studios.

He is the former executive editor of the Los Angeles Times. Under his leadership, the newspaper won four Pulitzer Prizes and its first Oscar for the documentary short film, “The Last Repair Shop,” directed by Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers. The Times also implemented a range of new initiatives, including the “Fast Break Desk” for breaking news and trending topics, “the 404” social content creation team, the Latino identity and culture vertical “De Los,” and a reimagined climate, science and health coverage department.  

Before joining the Times in June 2021, Merida was a senior vice president at ESPN and editor in chief of The Undefeated (now Andscape), a multimedia platform that explores the intersections of race, sports, and culture. During his tenure at ESPN, he also oversaw the investigative/news enterprise unit, the shows “Outside the Lines” and “E60,” and chaired ESPN’s Editorial Board. While at ESPN, the journalism he helmed received three Sports Emmys. 

Before joining ESPN, Merida spent 22 years at the Washington Post in a variety of reporting, writing and leadership roles. He covered Congress and national politics, was a longform feature writer for the Style section, a columnist for the Sunday magazine, associate editor, national editor, and managing editor for news and features coverage. As managing editor, he helped lead The Post to four Pulitzer Prizes and the paper embarked on a digital transformation that made it one of the fastest growing news organizations in the country. 

Earlier in his career, Merida was a general assignments reporter at The Milwaukee Journal. He also spent 10 years at The Dallas Morning News in various roles, including covering local and national politics, the White House, and overseeing foreign and national news coverage. 

Merida is co-author of the critically acclaimed “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas,” the bestselling “Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs,” and “Kamala: Her Historic, Joyful and Auspicious Sprint to the White.” He also is the editor of and a contributor to the anthology, “Being a Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril,” based on an award-winning Washington Post series.

He has been honored with numerous awards for journalism, including from the University of Missouri, the University of Kansas, and the University of Michigan. In 2020, he was given the Chuck Stone Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Association of Black Journalists, and was named NABJ’s Journalist of the Year in 2000. In 1990, Merida was a Pulitzer Prize finalist as part of a Dallas Morning News team reporting on the world’s “hidden wars.” 

Merida is a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, the L.A. Local News Initiative Board, The Video Consortium Board, the KFF Board of Trustees, the Boston University Board of Trustees, the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation Board of Advisors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

He is married to author and essayist Donna Britt, and they have three sons–Justin, Darrell and Skye–and a grandson, Syd.  

Meet the Moderator

Eva McKend joined CNN's Washington D.C. bureau in September 2021 as a National Politics Reporter. She previously served as an on-air congressional correspondent, reporting for Spectrum’s 24-hour news stations across the country from the nation’s capital with a special focus on Kentucky's congressional delegation. Eva also filed reports for other Spectrum News channels including NY1 and Bay News 9.​

She has become known in Washington for her pointed questions to people in leadership, getting then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to confirm on the record that climate change is being exacerbated by humans and that he wasn’t going to be an “impartial juror” in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. Her question to McConnell on reparations for slavery elicited his most robust rejection of the concept to date and drove the news cycle nationwide for several days.

Eva’s series of reports on Black hemp farmers following the crop’s legalization in the 2018 Farm Bill earned her a first-place prize in enterprise and investigative broadcast reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists Louisville chapter. She was also nominated for an Ohio Valley Regional Emmy for the work.

​Eva is a regular guest on the WAMU/NPR program 1A, distributed to more than 400 public radio stations across the U.S.

From 2015-18, she served as an anchor at WCAX-TV, the market-leading CBS affiliate in Vermont where she was also known for her tough interviews with elected officials. She was named a Rising Star by Vermont Business Magazine in 2017.

Before Vermont, Eva worked as a reporter for Spectrum News Hudson Valley from 2012-14. During her time in the region, she covered many stories as the Sullivan County reporter that received national and international attention including the murder trial of Paul Novak and the malfeasance of a village mayor, securing surveillance video from his high profile arrest via FOIA request, footage that went on to go viral. Her ongoing coverage of an illegal demolition in Monticello was recognized by the New York State Associated Press for Best Continuing Coverage. The AP also gave her a nod for General Excellence in Individual Reporting.

She also spent a summer as a Washington, D.C.-based correspondent for Springfield, Mo., CBS affiliate KOLR/KOZL.

​Eva is a graduate of Swarthmore College and earned her master's degree from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University through the Turner Diversity Fellowship. She is a proud member of the National Association of Black Journalists.

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