As Robin Williams '04 sat down to his grandmother's home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner last fall, something on the table caught his eye.
"The dressing looked a radiating sunburst on the plate," he remembers. Before long he was standing on his chair, aiming camera lens and color film at the plate of dressing.
With the remaining film, he photographed the place settings, the shrimp cocktails, the sweet potato casserole, the outside of the turkey, the inside of the turkey and the marshmallows.
Williams considers photography not only a documentary but a "found" art. It's the art of training a curious eye on ordinary objects, then teasing out and highlighting their individual charms — consecrating them. It's about forcing the eye to scrutinize what it would ordinarily pass over.
"Photography introduces people to images that really exist," he says. "Images they can readily identify with and put in context. It forces them to reexamine the 'real.'"
"I like to look closely at everyday objects that are often overlooked," he adds. "Poison ivy rashes. Scars. Bruises. Lollipops — biting them in half and seeing how light reflects inside a crystallized object. I like getting close enough to these objects to distort them beyond the ordinary level of familiarity. They're beautiful miniature landscapes."
Such photography gets at the essence of objects, investigating their forms and characters outside their usual contexts. Williams concentrates on color photography; many of his pictures are close and curious studies of texture and luminance — poring over intricacies of a silvery rock, a red blossom, or a dog's smooth golden coat. A hard patch of glare on a bronze sculpture. A cow's tender, drooping ear and eye — each white eyelash clearly defined.
He even hatched an idea of photographing a series of used dining hall trays: "I wanted to look at the geometric arrangements of the food left on the plates."
Sensitivity to a object's unique character carries over to his work with human subjects. Williams spent last summer in Ghana, educating people about AIDS and taking pictures. "When you hear 'third world country,' all sorts of images come to mind," he says, offering as an example the quasi-anthropological " 'National Geographic photo: This is how Africans live, how they eat, how they dress.' Those photos are more about studying and documenting a whole population."
His photos from Ghana are studies not only of lifestyle, but of individuals, especially children. "That's just how it is in Africa," he says. "You get your camera out, thinking you're going to photograph a landscape, and the kids just pop up from everywhere."
He captures them in a range of mundane and extraordinary tasks. A girl pats talcum powder on her little sister. A little boy plays with a goat. Four children on tiptoe strain to spy over a ledge into a house. Middle-school-aged girls, sun glancing off their foreheads, march while carrying signs reading "Stop AIDS, Love Life" and "Maintain One Lover."
Color photography was an ideal medium for Africa — color was embedded in everything: in the neon shirt that every woman in Ghana seemed to wear, in the red roofs and in the dark hands that plucked leaves and ground bright red peppers.
Williams was drawn to the luminous, variegated shades of skin. "The skin was just amazing. 'Black' is not one color. There were these incredible mahogany tones," he says, pointing out rich reflections on a woman's cheek and on the arms of a woodcarver who himself resembles a carving.
Williams encountered a different challenge while photographing the residents of Triform, a farming community for developmentally disabled young adults. There, his responsibilities as an artist were not only aesthetic, but humane.
"These people are often photographed in ways that tend to showcase their weaknesses, irregularities, deviations — anything that sets them apart from mainstream society," he says.
Williams chose to highlight the farm residents' individualism, photographing many of them in their bedrooms which are decorated to their own tastes with artwork, maps, flags, and dream catchers.
He caught them in organic poses — one reclining pensively on a couch, another carefully pouring milk into a trough.
"Timothy was highly able," he recalls of the latter man. "Looking at the picture, you have no idea of what he's through." It's a portrait not of disability, but of adroitness and gracefully assumed responsibility.
A photograph's meaning is often premeditated, but may evolve. Williams is especially attentive to small surprises that crop up after printing — felicities of form, light, and color.
"They make photos one of a kind," he says, pointing out a triad of red, yellow and green in a London street, a cluster of children describing a graceful shape, or an uninterrupted line of eyes cleaving through a crowd. "They're not reproducible." The camera not only examines, but records what may never again be.
A photograph can captivate in many ways — with its composition, its colors, its unusual vantage point, its sense of intimacy or remoteness.
"A lot of everyday people are apprehensive about approaching art," Williams says. "They feel like they're required to like it, understand it, 'get' it." But sometimes a photo engages us beyond our senses and intellects.
In one of Williams's pictures, a woman sets a dining table. Sharp natural light suffuses the curtains, yet remains at the periphery of the drably colored room. The multiple place settings acutely contrast the lone figure. She appears absorbed in her own world. The room seems steeped in age and elegy.
"I grew up going to that house," says Williams. "It's just down the street from ours. It hasn't been redecorated since the 1960s — it's trapped in a time warp like a lot of old houses."
The woman in the photo is his grandmother, whose husband passed away over twenty years ago. She's setting the table for Thanksgiving dinner.
Read More
Princeton Zoning Board of Adjustment approves renovations to Tower and Charter Clubs
Sena Chang and Isaac BernsteinOn March 27, the Municipality of Princeton’s Zoning Board of Adjustment approved construction developments for Tower Club and Charter Club. Renovations for both clubs are aimed towards improving accessibility.
On March 27, the Municipality of Princeton’s Zoning Board of Adjustment approved construction developments for Tower Club and Charter Club. Renovations for both clubs are aimed towards improving accessibility.
Students support local businesses with new platform Zage
Jack AllenAfter hearing about the struggles faced by a number of these restaurants after students left campus in mid-March, Dilbagi created Zage, an online platform that allows community members to send money to local businesses now to redeem as credits on their purchases in the future.
This fall, go beyond the 'Bubble'
Dora ZhaoEven though classes are picking up, weekends are the perfect time for students to escape the Orange Bubble. While going out to eat on Nassau is enjoyable, there is so much to see beyond Princeton. For those looking for a day trip or a chance to explore the area outside of Princeton, here is a list of ideas to do this fall.