Troubled by the lack of representation of Black photographers, Willis began photographing African American life around her. Her earlier work is deeply informed by the lives of the older women who worked alongside her mother. This resulted in her lifelong study of constructions of Black beauty. Willis recorded the interactions between the women in the salon, and noted how nurturing and aesthetics manifested within the establishment. Willis published her first book in 1985, Black Photographers 1840 to 1940: An Illustrated Bio-Bibliography, marking the start of her numerous endeavors to shed light on the portrayal of Black beauty, gender, and liberation.

Willis also frequently works with the archive by using scholarly work and personal history. Drawing inspiration from her family’s legacy in sewing, she imposes archival imagery of family and civil war soldiers upon various fabrics, including quilts and textiles. Willis’s photography is amplified by her research and curatorial work, all of which have played an integral part in the field of photography and understanding African American history.

Willis earned a BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art, an MFA from Pratt Institute, an MA from City College of New York, and a PhD from George Mason University. Willis is the recipient of awards including the International Center of Photography Award in Writing (1995); the MacArthur Fellowship (2000); Guggenheim Fellowship (2005); the CAA Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art (2021); and the Don Tyson Prize (2022). The Studio Museum featured Willis in a number of exhibitions, and she received the Studio Museum’s Award for Achievement in Scholarship in 2001. Her work first entered the Studio Museum collection in 2005.