Carla Williams’ Untitled (knots undone) / (braids) #6, 1990-1991 / 2024 is produced in this special edition for the occasion of the 2024 NY Art Book Fair. The original Polaroid is part of an extensive body of work that the artist produced between 1984 and 1999, and kept private for nearly 30 years. This image exemplifies the curiosity and experimentation of a young, queer, Black woman exploring emotion and body as material, which is further reflected in the torn perforated edge of the Polaroid itself.
Carla Williams was born in 1965 in Los Angeles in her parents’ car during the incendiary aftermath of the Watts riots. She received her BA in photography from Princeton University and her MA and MFA from the University of New Mexico. The next decades she continued working in the creative field as an independent photography historian, writer, and editor. Amongst other publications, together with Deborah Willis she co-wrote the groundbreaking 2002 book The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (out of print). Williams’ has been an insider artworld artist her entire life; since 2022 publications, galleries, museums and collectors are for the first time recognizing her for her creative accomplishments.
