Books
When Home is a Photograph: Blackness and Belonging in the World
Duke University Press, 2026
Coreen Simpson: A Monograph
Aperture, 2025
Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images
Aperture, 2024
Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography
Thames and Hudson, 2024
Migrating the Black Body: Visual Culture and the African Diaspora
University of Washington Press, 2017
Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle
University of North Carolina Press, 2011
The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory
University of Georgia Press, 2006
Selected Writing
Articles & Essays
- 2020Art Journal (Winter 2020)Peer review; reprinted in Art Journal Open, January 14, 2021
- Black One Shot, Lisa Uddin and Michael Boyce Gillespie, editors. ASAP Journal (open access), 11.1 July 2020
- 2019The Journal of Transnational American Studies, Special Issue, volume 10, issue 1 (Summer 2019)with Cheryl Finley and Heike Raphael-HernandezEds. Obenland, Frank, et al.
- The New Inquiry, July 2019
- 2017“The Here and Now of Eslanda Robeson’s African Journey”The Journal of Transnational American Studies, volume 8, issue 1 (2017)Reprint
- “Toyin Ojih Odutola: A Matter of Fact”Artforum, April 2017Reprinted in Toyin Ojih Odutola: The UmuEze Amara and House of Obajemi, Rizzoli, 2021
- 2016Aperture: Vision & Justice, Special Issue guest edited by Sarah Lewis, Aperture magazine #223, Summer 2016Reprinted as “What if Black Lives Truly Mattered?” in Aperture.com blog, September 13, 2018
- 2015“Thanks to Berkeley…’: Managing Multiculturalism in an Age of Austerity”Qui Parle, volume 23, number 2 (Spring 2015)with Michael Mark CohenPeer review
- 2014The Atlantic, July 3, 2014with Robin J. Hayes
- 2013“Marcus Garvey in Stereograph”Small Axe 40 (March 2013)Commissioned
- 2012Al-Jazeera English, February 28, 2012with Michael CohenCommissioned
- 2009“Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory”History and Theory (Winter 2009)Peer review
- 2007“Come Let Us Build a New World Together’: SNCC and Photography of the Civil Rights Movement”American Quarterly, volume 59, number 4 (December 2007)Peer review
- “Lynching, Visuality, and the Un/Making of Blackness”NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Special Issue (Spring 2007)
- 2006Special Forum on Race and Photography, English Language Notes 44.2 (Fall/Winter 2006)Co-editor with Elizabeth Abel
- “Binaries at Work”Introductionwith Elizabeth Abel
- “Notes towards a Photographic Practice of Diaspora”Sole author
Chapters in Books & Exhibition Catalogs
- 2026“To Make Whole What Has Been Smashed’: Gordon Parks’s ‘A Harlem Family’ and the Limits of Documentary Photography”Gordon Parks: Diary of a Harlem Family 1967/1968, Steidl
- “Together We Make the Photograph: On Race, Justice, and Visuality in the Work of Paul Mpagi Sepuya”Paul Mpagi Sepuya – Focus. Desire. Spector Books (English/German)
- 2025“Exploring the Shoals”Stephanie Sparling-Williams, Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art, Scala/Brooklyn Museum
- “David Alekhuogie” and “Greg Breda”Made in LA 2025, Hammer Museum
- “Torkwase Dyson,” “Celestia Morgan,” and “Toyin Ojih Odutola”Birmingham Museum of Art permanent collection catalog
- “Toyin Ojih Odutola: Other Worlds are Possible”Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany
- 2024“Letting Air and Light on the Wound”Wendel A. White, Manifest / Thirteen Colonies, Radius Books/Peabody
- 2022“Water No Get Enemy”LaToya Ruby Frazier, Flint is Family in Three Acts, Steidl/The Gordon Parks Foundation
- “Ser visto como libre: Fotografía y Poder Negro / Being Seen to Be Free: Photography and Black Power”Laura Terré, editor, La fotografía habla de revoluciones, KBr Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona
- 2020Erica Deeman: Familiar Stranger, Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San FranciscoTranslated and reprinted as Nuevos territorios para la fotografía in Exit Magazine of Photography (Spain), Issue #81, March 2021
- Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography, Tina Campt, Brian Wallis, Marianne Hirsch and Gil Hochberg, editors, Steidl/The Walther CollectionWinner of Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation Photography Catalogue of the Year 2020
- “Woman with Death on Her Mind”The Black Aesthetic Season III: Black Interiors, nan collymore + The Black Aesthetic Collective, editors, Wolfman Books
- 2019“When I Think of Home: Place in the Work of Mildred Howard”Mark White, editor, DVA: Mildred Howard, University of Oklahoma Press
- 2018“Lava Thomas’ Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott”Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco
- “Matters of Fact”Toyin Ojih Odutola: A Matter of Fact, Emily Kuhlman, editor, Museum of the African Diaspora
- “Already Forgotten: Dawoud Bey’s Harlem Redux”Dawoud Bey, Seeing Deeply, University of Texas Press
- 2017“At Berkeley: Documenting the University in an Age of Austerity”Remaking Reality: U.S. Documentary Culture After 1945, Sara Blair, Joseph Entin, Franny Nudelman, editors, University of North Carolina Presswith Michael Mark Cohen
- 2012“Ida B. Wells and the Shadow Archive”Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity, Maurice Wallace and Shawn Michelle Smith, editors, Duke University Press
- 2011“Ed Kienholz: Five Card Stud 1969/2011”Exhibit brochure, Edward Kienholz, Five Card Stud 1969–1972, Revisited, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
- 2003“The Consumption of Lynching Images”Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis, editors, Harry N. Abrams Press(2018) Reprint and Spanish translation in Cuerpo Político Negro edited by Mireia Sentís, Biblioteca Afroamericana Madrid (BAAM)