Erin Schaff, political photojournalist and staff photographer for The New York Times, joins Dr. Deborah Willis, Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, for the first conversation in the spring 2025 Naomi Rosenblum ICP Talk’s Photographer Lecture Series. The two will discuss Schaff’s recent coverage of the 2024 U.S. election and inauguration as well as Dr. Willis’ new book Kamala: Her Historic, Joyful, and Auspicious Sprint to the White House.
ICP members receive free access to ICP Talks and most public programs. Become a member now and reserve your seat.
This program is being offered both in person at ICP, located on NYC's Lower East Side, and online. Tickets to attend the conversation in person are $5 and do not include access to ICP’s galleries. Arrive early to see current exhibitions Weegee: Society of the Spectacle, To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography, and American Job: 1940–2011, on view through May 5, 2025.
Erin Schaff is a staff photographer for the New York Times. She spent the first eight years of her career as a political photojournalist working to bring readers behind the scenes of congress and the presidency and now mainly focuses on intimate visual stories with the aim of communicating the impact of national issues on peoples lives with honesty and empathy.
Deborah Willis, Ph.D. is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She has affiliated appointments with the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis, 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 the director of NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture/Institute of African American Affairs. Her research examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, the photographic history of Slavery and Emancipation, contemporary women photographers, and beauty.
She is the author of Kamala: Her Historic, Joyful, And Auspicious Sprint to the White House (co-authored with Kevin Merida), The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship, Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, among others. Dr. Willis’ curated exhibitions include: “Framing Moments in the KIA'' at Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts, and "Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory'' at FotoFocus.
Dr. Willis was awarded 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 was the Robert Mapplethorpe Photographer in Residence of the American Academy in Rome and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a recipient of the Don Tyson Prize for the Advancement of American Art by the Crystal Bridges Museum in 2022; was named the Mary Lucille Dauray Artist-in-Residence by the Norton Museum of Art and taught her a Master Class titled Home, Reimagining Interiority at Anderson Ranch in 2023. In 2024, Dr. Willis was appointed Board Chair of the Andy Warhol Foundation and elected to the American Philosophical Society.
About the Naomi Rosenblum ICP Talks Photographer Lecture Series
ICP is thrilled to honor Naomi Rosenblum’s contribution to the field and to further her life’s work through this lecture series. Naomi Rosenblum was one of the leading photography historians of her generation and the author of A World History of Photography and A History of Women Photographers. The 2024-2025 Naomi Rosenblum ICP Talks Photographer Lecture Series is made possible through generous support from the Rosenblum Family. Speakers in the 2024-2025 season include: Erin Schaff with Dr. Deborah Willis (March 5, 2025), Keisha Scarville and Carla Williams (March 11, 2025), Johnny Miller with Marysarah Quinn (April 7, 2025); Killi Yuyan and Elizabeth Krist (December 11, 2024), Elle Perez and Mark McKnight (March 4), Joseph Rodriguez and Sheila Pree Bright (November 21, 2024), and Maddie McGarvey and Karrin Anderson (October 21, 2024).
Current ICP students and faculty of the One-Year Certificate programs are automatically enrolled and invited to attend all lectures.
