Haverford’s curator of photography
and chair of the fine arts department, William Williams, has
been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship
to complete his photographic record of Civil War battlefields
and historic sites where African Americans played an important
role. Williams is one of only four photographers among the 184
artists, scholars and scientists selected from over 3,200 applications
for this year’s fellowships.
Willie Williams
Williams’ interest in creating
a photographic documentation of the contributions of black soldiers
during the Civil War stemmed from his photography project of
Gettysburg’s memorial park. Begun in 1986 and completed
in 1996, this series of photographs taken with large-format
cameras was later published in a book titled, Gettysburg:
A Journey in Time. (Thomas Publications, 1996). “As
I photographed the park over the years in different seasons,
the significance of this historical landscape began to clarify
itself for me as an idea and as a series of photographs,”
he explains.
The experience also made him acutely
aware that many Civil War battlefields and historic sites are
in constant jeopardy of being lost, particularly many of the
449 sites where black soldiers fought and died. One example,
says Williams, is in the Port Hudson, Louisiana, area near the
Mississippi River, which is considered one of the best preserved
Civil War commemorative areas. “It was also where black
troops first demonstrated their fighting ability in a large
Civil War battle,” explains Williams. “But the portion
of the site where black troops fought rests outside of the park
boundaries on private land, unprotected and almost impossible
to visit.”
Williams became aware of other sites
that are also in danger of being lost as a result of property
sales, lack of any formal historical designations or, in one
case, flooding. “Fort Wagner,”notes Williams, “
was the scene of a massive battle involving black soldiers.
It’s underwater today as a result of construction by the
Army Corps of Engineers.
“Historic sites such
as these deserve to be preserved just as much as Gettysburg,”
says Williams.
In addition to the lack of care for
the battle sites themselves, Williams believes little acknowledgement
has been given to the contributions of black Civil War soldiers.
“The Robert Gould Shaw 54th Massachusetts Monument on
Boston Common is the best known and until recently, one of the
few memorials dedicated to black Civil War soldiers,”
says Williams. “But, it wasn’t until 1989 that the
black members of the 54th were inscribed on the back of the
monument.”
Williams plans to continue the work
he began at Gettysburg by locating and photographing these neglected
sites. “It has been a profound experience to work and
use history as a starting point for creative work which is both
documentary and interpretative,” he says.” My goal
is to transform these killing fields into spaces of contemplation,
reflection, and remembrance through still photography, and to
refute the notion that blacks were given their rights after
the Civil War without having fought and won them.”
Williams’ work has received
support from a number of prestigious organizations including
the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and the Pew Foundation
Fellowships in the Arts program. In 1993, the Pennsylvania Convention
Center commissioned four photographs of the Gettysburg National
Military Park from Williams for the Center’s permanent
collection. His work from these projects and his earlier subjects
is part of a number of museum collections around the country,
including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum,
the Brooklyn Museum, the Baltimore Museum, and the permanent
collections of several colleges and universities.
A graduate of Hamilton College and
Yale University, Williams has exhibited in dozens of one-man,
two-person and group shows throughout his career. He is an expert
on the photography of Walker Evans and has lectured widely on
the interpretations of Evans’ photographs of vernacular
architecture and other quintessential American subjects.
At Haverford, Williams teaches courses
on the technical and creative aspects of photography. In 1979,
the year following his appointment to Haverford’s fine
arts faculty, he founded the College’s photography collection
and continues to serve as its curator. The 3,000 photographs
in the collection represent the history of the medium from its
beginnings in 1839 to the present.
