Coreen Simpson

Coreen Simpson (born February 18, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American artist whose photographic and design practice explores Black cultural life, portraiture, self-representation, beauty, and the dignity of everyday social worlds. Working across photography and jewelry design, Simpson examines identity, style, and community through portraiture, documentary observation, and object-making that centers Black presence within both visual culture and adornment.  Simpson studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of Design, and she also studied with Frank Stewart at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1977. Her work often engages portraiture, nightlife, fashion, Black social history, and the archive, using direct photographic encounters and mobile studio strategies to consider character, visibility, and the richness of Black life in settings ranging from Harlem barbershops and Queens braiding salons to downtown Manhattan clubs. In addition to photography, she created The Black Cameo collection in 1990, a jewelry line that reimagined the cameo tradition through portraits of Black women.  Her work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the International Center of Photography, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Anacostia Community Museum, and her photographs were also included in the 2025 exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 at the National Gallery of Art. She received the Mary McLeod Bethune Award from the National Council of Negro Women, the Madame C.J. Walker Award, and the National Council of Negro Women’s Legends Award. Coreen Simpson lives and works in New York City.