BOOKS
Vision & Justice. New York: One World/Random House, 2025.
The Unseen Truth. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2024.
EDITED COLLECTIONS
Winner of the 2021 Photography Network Book Prize.
Vision & Justice: A Civic Curriculum. New York: Aperture, April 2019.
“Vision & Justice” Special Issue, Aperture 223 (2016).
Winner of the 2017 Infinity Award, International Center of Photography, Critical Writing and Research.
ARTICLES, REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOOKS [Peer-Reviewed]
“Groundwork: Race and Aesthetics in the Era of Stand Your Ground Law,” in M. Kelly and M. Roelofs, eds., Black Art and Aesthetics: Relationalities, Interiorities, Reckonings. London: Bloomsbury, 2023.
“The Arena of Suspension: Carrie Mae Weems, Bryan Stevenson, and the “Ground” in the Stand Your Ground Law Era.” in Law and Literature, no. 34 (2022): 1-32. (PDF)
“Visual studies questionnaire: how do you engage with the visual, and what is its importance in the twenty-first century?” Visual Studies 36 (2021): 223-225.
“From Here We Saw What Happened: Carrie Mae Weems and the Practice of Art History,” in S. Lewis with C. Garnier, eds., Carrie Mae Weems. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2021, 1-6.
“Groundwork: Race and Aesthetics in the Era of Stand Your Ground Law,” in “Blackness” Special Issue, Art Journal 79, no. 4 (2020): 92-113. (PDF)
Winner of the 2022 Arthur Danto/American Society for Aesthetics Prize, American Philosophical Association.
“The Insistent Reveal: Louis Agassiz, Joseph T. Zealy, Carrie Mae Weems, and the Politics of Undress in the Photography of Racial Science,” in I. Barbash, J. Stauffer, and D. Willis, eds., To Make Their Way in the World: A New History of African Americans Revealed Through Nineteenth-Century Photography. Cambridge, Mass.: Aperture / Peabody Museum Press, 2020. (PDF)
“African American Abstraction,” in Eddie Chambers, ed., The Routledge Companion to African American Art. New York and London: Routledge, 2019, pp. 159-173. (PDF)
“The Future Real Conditional: Race and Monuments in the United States,” October 165 (2018): 93-99.
“The Art of Negotiation,” in Dawoud Bey, ed., Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply: Photographs, 1975-2016, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018. [TIME Magazine's Best Photo Books title of 2018.]
“Love Visual: A Conversation with Haile Gerima,” Callaloo, no. 3 (2013): 634-657.
“Unhomed Geographies: The Paintings of Julie Mehretu,” Callaloo, no. 1 (2010): 219-22.
“How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness,” Nka, no. 22/23 (2008): 206-7. [Book Review]
ARTICLES AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOOKS
“The Vision and Justice Project,” in K. Drew and J. Wortham, eds., Black Futures. New York: One World, 2020.
“Kerry Washington Wants You to Know the Truth,” Town & Country Magazine, August 5, 2020.
[Interview with Washington and lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union about the documentary, The Fight, executive produced by Washington]
“Where Are The Photos of People Dying of Covid?” The New York Times, May 1, 2020.
“The Racial Bias Built into Photography,” New York Times, April 25, 2019.
“Michelle Obama: Representational Justice,” in The Meaning of Michelle. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017. [Reviewed in the New York Times and NPR’s “Here and Now”.]
“Which is the Real Confederate Flag?” New York Times, June 25, 2017, A16.
“Foreword,” in Carrie Mae Weems: The Kitchen Table Series. New York: Matsumoto Editions, 2016. [Selected as one of the “Best Art Books of 2016,” in the New York Times.]
“The Other Us,” Art in America, no. 5 (2016): 49-52. [Book Review, Kobena Mercer, Travel and See: Black Diaspora Art Practices Since the 1980s. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016].
“Of Two Minds: ‘Powers of Two’ by Joshua Wolf Shenk,” New York Times, August 22, 2014.
“The Hidden Past of Sochi,” The New Yorker, February 19, 2014.
“Yinka Shonibare,” Artforum, no. 2 (2009): 227. [Exhibition Review]
“Arthur Simms at Five Myles,” Art in America, no. 2 (2006): 132. [Exhibition Review]
“De(i)fying the Masters: Kehinde Wiley’s portraits meld urban street life and European high art traditions,” Art in America, no. 4 (2005): 120-25. [Exhibition Review]
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE ESSAYS
“Elizabeth Prophet’s Tools of Sovereignty,” in S. Ganz Blythe, D. Molon, and A. Pickworth, eds., Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024.
“Conversation,” in Deborah Roberts: Twenty Years of Art/Work. Santa Fe: Radius Books, 2023 (PDF).
“Just Portraiture: A Legend at 100,” in Avedon 100. New York: Gagosian, 2023. (PDF)
“Introduction,” in Philip Brookman, ed., Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work, 1940-1950. Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 2018. [New York Times’ Best Photo Books of 2018]
“Introduction,” in Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal. New York: Aperture, 2018.
“Henry Taylor: The Impossible Present,” in Henry Taylor. New York: Rizzoli, 2018.
“Incendiary Acts,” in Lyle Ashton Harris: The Ektachrome Archive. New York: Aperture, 2017.
“Mark Bradford: The Art of Productive Dissent,” in C. Bedford and K. Siegel, eds., Mark Bradford: Tomorrow is Another Day, New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2017.
“Whitfield Lovell: A Reverence for Ordinary People,” in Whitfield Lovell: KIN. New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2016.
Race, Love, and Labor: New Work from the Center for Photography at Woodstock's Artist-In-Residency Program, exh. cat. New York: State University of New York Press, 2014.
“Celebration and Critique,” in Kehinde Wiley. New York: Rizzoli, 2012.
“Mickalene Thomas: On Beauty,” in Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe. exh. cat. Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2012.
Romare Bearden: Idea to Realization. New York: D.C. Moore Gallery, 2011.
“Wangechi Mutu,” in Re: Collection: Selected Works from The Studio Museum in Harlem. New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2010.
Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco, The Dissolve: The SITE Santa Fe Eighth International Biennial, exh. cat. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2010.
“A Reverence for Ordinary People,” in Mercy, Patience and Destiny: The Women of Whitfield Lovell’s Tableaux. Atlanta: Woodruff Arts Center and The Savannah College of Art and Design, 2009.
“Freedom Beyond Fort Monroe,” in Collier Schorr ed. Freeway Balconies, exh. cat. New York: Distributed Art Publishers and the Guggenheim Museum, 2008.
“Incendiary Acts,” in Cassandra Coblentz ed. Lyle Ashton Harris: Blow Up, exh. cat. Scottsdale, AZ: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Greg Miller & Co., 2008.
“American Idols,” in Deborah Willis ed., Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraiture from 1865 to the Present, exh. cat. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2007.
“Mark Bradford: The Evidence of Things Not Seen,” in Street Level, exh. cat. Durham, NC: Duke University Press / The Nasher Museum at Duke University, 2007.
“Boris Achour,” Notre Histoire: Une Scène Artistique Française Émergent, exh. cat. Paris: Palais du Toyko, 2006.
“Zoe Charlton,” in Thelma Golden ed., Frequency, exh. cat. New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2005.