Debra Willis, one of the leading scholars of photography in the United States, is a Professor of Photography and Imaging at the New York University, with special interests in Visual Culture and Photography.

She writes about photography, specifically black photography and in the Diaspora, and about curetting exhibitions of black culture. She was at the recent African Regional Summit and Exhibition on Visual Arts (ARESUVA) and spoke on sundry issues. Excerpts:

Before you came, what were your expectations of the ARESUVA?

This is my first time in Nigeria and I really knew nothing about it. Though I had heard a lot about FESTAC '77 and how culturally excited people were about it. This is another chance to meet a number of artists from other parts of Africa to talk about their works, hoping that this could be the beginning for a biannual of African arts and culture and from the Diaspora arts and culture.

Have your expectations been met or are you disappointed?

My expectations have been met. I sent an email to a friend two days ago to say this is an eye opening experience. I heard so many wonderful stories from the papers presented about the teaching of African arts.

Also, when we, in the States, think about Africa, we do not think about Africa as an individual State; we take it as one. Here, we get a chance to see that it is not one collective view and what a lot of people talk about is not written about within the medium of sculpture and painting. One disappointing aspect for me about the event is the absence of photography. My interest is photography and I have organised my paper to talk about that because I want to include some portraits of contemporary African and African American photographers to teach people to use photography. As a photographer for over 30years, I have spent my life time writing about black culture and black images and I have always wanted people to understand that we have to improve photography as part of things like this. In European and white American, conference, auction houses and the likes, photography is a big seller and so we need to inculcate that in subsequent ARESUVA editions to get people to understand its importance as an art.

What messages have you got for ARESUVA?

We also really need to consider how the discussions could be broadened with the people because what I think this conference has is the central hope in vision and the vision I think is the collective story about arts in terms of voices. We have to think about how to reuse art as the soul of African culture. It is the first time I have heard such an expression. To use the term The soul is very relevant to the discussion. Also, understanding the multiple histories as what we know about early African arts was basically through ethnological studies. But what I am learning as an arts and photo historian is that there was one reading and now we need to broaden our reading as to what kind of works were created, who the main teachers were and who is writing the text as well as who is quoting us as writers. I know that as Africans in the Diaspora writers, our voices are not heard. That has to change.