Bill Gaskins has previously taught in the American Studies Program and the Department of Art at Cornell University.

Gaskins has exhibited his photography including a group exhibition at the Jersey City Museum that also included work by Renée Green, Chitra Ganesh, Simone Leigh and Sharon Louden, and a screening of his short film, The Meaning of Hope at Detroit Institute of Arts.

[7] His book Good and Bad Hair (1997) depicts African American hairstyles, and was based on a 1996 exhibition at Robert B. Menschel Photography Gallery.

His work was also shown in the 2003 group show HairStories at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art: the Phoenix New Times called his "Tireka and Tamana, Easter Sunday, Baltimore, Maryland", a photograph of two women against the landscape of industrial Baltimore, and his photographs of African-American hair shows "the most fascinating photos of all" in the exhibition.

[9] In 2017, Gaskins spent time researching "The Black Photographers Annual," a four volume anthology published between 1973 and 1980.