Coreen Simpson is a noted African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 photographer and jewelry designer

Jewelry designer

A jewellery designer or jewelry designer is a person who renders original jewellery creations and usually constructs them as well...

, whose work has an African American theme. She was born and resides in New York City.

Simpson's photographic career began as a fashion photographer for the Village Voice and the Amsterdam News in the early 1980s, and covered many African American cultural and political events in the mid 1980s. She is also noted for her studies of Harlem

Harlem

Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

 nightlife. Her work's ability to present a wide variety of subjects with "depth of character and dignity" has been compared to that of Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....

 and Weegee

Weegee

Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig , a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography....

.

Selected exhibitions

• The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, 2001
• Bronx Museum of the Arts
  Bronx Museum of the Arts
  The Bronx Museum of the Arts is a cultural institution located in the New York City borough of The Bronx. The museum focuses on contemporary and 20th century works created by American artists, and it has hosted exhibitions of art and design from Latin America, Africa and Asia...
  
  , Bronx, NY, 2001, 1998
• Anacostia Museum/Smithsonian, Washington, DC, 2000
• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY, 1999
• Musée de la Photographie, Brussels, Belgium, 1998
• International Center of Photography, New York, NY, 1998

Education

• Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY;
• Parsons School of Design, New York, NY

Footnotes