Deborah Willis puts a trove of historical photographs into context, and in the process the passion of W.E.B. Du Bois.

More than 25 years after first learning of the images in W.E.B. Du Bois’ ’Exhibit of American Negroes,’ Deborah Willis got to flip through them firsthand.

The North Philadelphia-bred scholar was enlisted by the Library of Congress in 2001 to contribute to A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of Progress (Amistad, 208 pp., $24.95), a new collection of photographs published by Amistad/HarperCollins. The book gathers some 150 sepia-toned images from the Du Bois exhibit at the 1900 Paris World's Fair; put together in four months and funded by Congress for only $15,000, the multifaceted presentation showed charts, maps and pictures depicting the advancement of African Americans at the turn of the 20th century, one generation out of slavery. Through essays by Willis and Pulitzer Prize-winning Du Bois biographer David Levering Lewis, the book gives tremendous insight into the history of race relations and the public's view in the era surrounding the imagery.

A noted historian of African-American photography, Willis was able to track down extensive background on the series of photographs she first read up on as an undergrad at Philadelphia College of the Arts (now University of the Arts).

Studying photography in the mid-'70s, Willis saw her race largely underrepresented in survey courses covering the annals of the medium.

There were practically no African Americans in the photo history we looked at, she says. So I became interested in finding a wider history. My professor, Anne Wilkes Tucker, was very supportive of the idea and it grew into a research project that year.

The project served as the genesis for Willis' ensuing career; she went on to receive a master's in art history from the City College of New York in 1986 and a doctorate in cultural studies at George Mason University earlier this year. Willis currently teaches studio photography and visual culture at New York University.

Along the way, she helped organize the 2000 Smithsonian exhibit Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840-Present. Around the same time, the Library of Congress wrapped up its showing of African American Odyssey, which included some of the Du Bois images that had been gathering dust over the past century.

The collection had been here since about 1909, says Linda Osborne, a writer and editor at the Library. Not much had been done with them when Maricia Battle [curator of the prints and photographs division] noticed the flipbooks and wanted them preserved.

The photographs still sat in oversize albums from the original exhibit, and Osborne says they remained astonishingly intact considering no special means had been taken to preserve them. Staff set out meticulously digitizing the prints, most of which were no larger than 5 by 7 inches, before exhibiting them to the public.

Following the Odyssey display, Ralph Eubanks, publishing director at the Library, and Battle decided the series demanded a larger audience.

Willis was working on her dissertation at George Mason when the Library asked her to assist in selecting photographs for Small Nation, as well as write an introductory essay detailing African-American photographers at the time. Unaware the prints still existed, she was thrilled to jump on the project.

It was actually part of my research back in the '70s, she says. I heard about the Paris exhibition back then but could not find any images. It was a chapter in my dissertation as well, but just like before, I had no images. It was wonderful to find out the Library of Congress had just processed the collection.

Small Nation covers the broad scope of Du Bois' exhibit, showing African Americans with an air of sophistication and delicate beauty converse to the caricatured, often derogatory images common in white newspapers and publications in the post-Reconstruction era.

Du Bois opted to focus his study mostly on Georgia, which had the largest black population at the time, and the book boasts a hefty inclusion of landscapes of black neighborhoods, farms and businesses. More compelling than the scenery, however, are the people. A young girl with fair, curly hair stands with her arm resting on a table, wearing an ornate dress. A group of nuns clad in old-fashioned habits converges on the steps of a church. Three men in collared shirts and vests busy themselves in the composing room of The Planet, a Richmond, Va.-based black newspaper.

[The photos] showed them as prosperous, middle-class, many are light-skinned, says Osborne. It's a striking difference from the views white America held at the time and, to some degree, still hold today.

A rather lengthy section of vignettes might seem a bit unremarkable with their highly similar style and composition, but consider the context in which these portraits were taken: They might seem normal now, but if you look back through history, you never hear of any images that show black beauty, says Willis. It's all stereotyped.

One of the most compelling aspects of the series is how Du Bois, in compiling the Paris exhibit, opted not to identify any of the subjects of the photos or even credit the photographers. This was a bit frustrating for those involved in researching the book, and Osborne says there was some speculation that many of the images were shot by Du Bois himself.

But in combing through the flipbooks, Willis was able to connect some of the work with the work of a photographer featured in the ’Reflections’ display, an Atlanta man named Thomas Askew, whom she believes Du Bois contracted to handle much of the shooting.

’I’m basically a visual person,’ Willis says. ’I read photographs. Some of Askew’s images [from ’Reflections’] were so distinctive, they stuck in my mind, and I recognized them in the Du Bois collection.’

She spent the better part of a year researching, and traveled down to the Auburn Avenue Research Library at the University of Atlanta to further pinpoint Askew’s work, identifying shooting locations and even a few subjects.

’His wife was a seamstress, and the photos he shot heavily focused on a style of dress,’ she says. ’Dress was important to that period; it was a time known as ’the new Negro,’ and African Americans looked to tell a new story of themselves. They were dandies, proprietors, homebuyers. ... It is a different story we are not familiar with.’

The reasons behind not identifying the subjects, however, remain uncertain. Osborne speculates that, as a sociologist, Du Bois put an emphasis on the charts and statistical studies in the exhibit, viewing the photos almost as secondary evidence.

It's odd, since we see them as beautiful, accomplished photos, we find them attractive as people and we want to know more, she says. People didn't seem to put the same value on artists and creativity back then.

Willis says the photo evidence was likely meant as a representative sampling of African-American life, and was therefore intended to remain generalized and anonymous.

I think [Du Bois] wanted to use the subjects as emblematic of what the new Negro looked like, she says. They were basically models. I don't think he wanted to individualize them; rather, he wanted to look at them as a collective image.

Deborah Willis will discuss and sign A Small Nation of People and give a slide lecture about the Du Bois photographs, Sat., Oct. 11, noon-2 p.m., African American Museum in Philadelphia, 701 Arch St., 215-574-0380, ext. 226 or 223.