From the event website:
“One of today’s most compelling emerging artists, Hank Willis Thomas will discuss the work in his first monograph, Pitch Blackness (Aperture), featuring his highly provocative series B®ANDED, addressing the commodification of African-American male identity. Willis Thomas holds a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and an MFA in photography—along with an MA in visual criticism—from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. His work has been shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; PS1, New York; and National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., among other venues. He is the recipient of the first Aperture West Book Prize.”
Hank will be speaking at the following Western venues next week:
SEATTLE: Wednesday, October 01, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Henry Art Gallery
15th Avenue NE and NE 41st Street
Seattle, Washington
(206) 543-2280
LOS ANGELES: Thursday, October 02, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Hammer Museum
1089 Wilshire Blvd. Gallery Six
Los Angeles, California
(310) 443-7000
SAN FRANCISCO: Friday, October 03, 2008 7:30 p.m.
Photoalliance at San Francisco Art Institute
800 Chestnut Street
San Francisco, California
(415) 781-8111
From the publisher’s website:
Book Synopsis
“Hank Willis Thomas gained wide recognition with his highly provocative series B®ANDED, which addresses the commodification of African-American male identity by raising questions about visual culture and the power of logos. Pitch Blackness, his first monograph, includes selections from this series and several others.
The book begins with a deeply personal and interpretive re-telling of the senseless murder of young Songha Willis, the artist’s cousin, who was robbed at gunpoint and murdered outside a nightclub in Philadelphia in 2000. It then charts Hank Willis Thomas’s career as he grapples with the issues of grief, black-on-black violence in America, and the ways in which corporate culture is complicit in the crises of black male identity. The concluding section presents his newest body of work, Unbranded, in which Willis Thomas examines advertising and media representation of African-Americans.
With his characteristic pointedness and dark humor, Willis Thomas shows in Pitch Blackness why he is considered one of today’s most compelling emerging artists. Hank Willis Thomas is the first recipient of the Aperture West Book Prize.
Pitch Blackness, was made possible, in part, by the generous support of Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla, and the LEF Foundation.”
Marketing Photos with Mary Virginia Swanson 
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