Willie Robert Middlebrook American, 1957- The images of Willie Middlebrook's African-American community explore, question, and communicate his social and aesthetic concerns. Middlebrook learned photography in the early 1970s, completing courses at the Communicative Arts Academy in his native Compton, California (1975), and receiving a degree from Compton Community College (A.A., 1978). Since that time he has lectured, curated, and exhibited throughout the United States, completed a number of public commissions, and taught in the Los Angeles area. Middlebrook draws inspiration from his family and roots, which he credits for his drive and ideals. Using a complex developing technique to create dense, multitoned, painterly images, he conveys the notion of an eroding cultural identity in his large-scale portraits of friends and family begun in the mid-1980s. In 1996 the Cleveland Museum of Art held a one-person exhibition of the series, Willie Robert Middlebrook Photographs: Portraits of My People. Middlebrook has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1982, 1993) and commendations from the city of Los Angeles (1987, 1989, 1991), and in 1988 was named "Hometown Hero" by the city of Compton. He was also awarded an artist-in-residency from Light Work, Syracuse (1992). A.W.