Carla Williams

Carla Williams (born 1965) is an American photographer. She worked as a photography curator and professor before opening at store in New Orleans. She was noticed by Paul Sepuya after posting her old photographs on Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2023, she published her first monograph Tender and held her first solo exhibition Circa 1985. She is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography. Biography Carla Williams was born in 1965 in Los Angeles, daughter of Evelyn and Wendell Williams. The same year, TBW Books released Tender, Williams' first monograph which then won the year's Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award for First PhotoBook.

Williams's work was included in the 2025 exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 at the National Gallery of Art.

Personal Originally living in Rochester, Williams moved to New Orleans because "it really had a hold on me", moving to an Eastlake style house in the 7th Ward.