Wishbone Grpahics

You could call Byrd Williams IV a scientist because he mixes metol, sodium bisulfite, sodium sulfite, pyrokatin, and potassium bromide to create his very own formula for accentuating highlights. But most people think of Williams, a fourth generation photographer, as an artist, and though elements of his career may be steeped in science, his very being is entrenched in what he considers a study of theculture of life – photography.

Williams, the Collin County Community College District (Collin) Photography Department chair, is a published writer and international artist whose work has been shown at the Dallas Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum and in D Magazine, Polo Magazine and many other publications throughout the United States and Germany. Williams was awarded a full fellowship for the completion of his Master of Fine Arts degree from Southern Methodist University. He was also selected as an artist in residence in Bad EMS, Germany and lived at “Schloss Balmoral,” better known as Wagner’s Castle. His work on the civic use of German, French, Belgian, English and Dutch street corners was featured on television and exhibited in the castle and at a museum in Trier, Germany.

“Photographs have such a heavy baggage of human response. There is a little hint of the eye or a moment of recognition because photographs connect at that level. They are working the best when they are working subconsciously. You don’t just get a surface map but rather the viewer sees what you are thinking or feeling in a spontaneous way,” said Williams.

According to Williams, students who attend Collin enter into the regional art community. He states that Collin has the biggest and most diverse photography program in the Metroplex, providing the largest enrollment and facility in the area. Collin offers fine art, commercial and documentary photography. Students can take a variety of photography classes including digital, news, fashion, landscape, architectural, photo studio management and portraiture. The Collin facility has two traditional labs with 20 stations in each lab, in addition to a full film-processing lab and three digital labs with 18 stations each. The department also offers a media lab with state-of-the-art scanners, mural printers and a full-lighting double studio.

However, the facilities and diverse curriculum are only part of the Collin photography experience. Students at this college learn the science and art of photography from professors who have studied everywhere from Pratt in New York to the Art Center in LA. Williams and his colleagues have photographed everything from landscape and architectural structures to images of famous people such as the Queen of England, Katharine Hepburn, John Travolta, Bob Hope, Elizabeth Taylor and Don Rickles.

Former Collin student and photographer Marc Wolens, whose images have been selected for exhibitions by curators at the Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Institution and the Whitney, Guggenheim and Amon Carter museums, believes Williams has the best artistic eye of any photographer in North Texas.

“Professor Williams has that rare ability to shoot both commercial and fine art at the highest level. Probably most importantly, his legacy includes not only the wonderful art he has produced, but also the hundreds of artists he has tirelessly gifted the world. He has energetically inspired hundreds of students in his classes. One meeting with Professor Williams will let you immediately feel the energy, joy, knowledge and insight that he gives his students,” said Wolens who has a black and white photograph in the permanent collection of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.

While some individuals mark their passageway through life by events, Williams does it by cameras. Mickey Mantle was not the topic of conversation at the Williams’ dinner table. Instead photography master Alfred Stieglitz reigned supreme. Williams started shooting pictures when he was in the first grade at six or seven years old. He received his first camera, a Brownie Starmite, at age eight. Neighborhood sports were not complete without Williams; no one emerged the victor of the foot races or fights without having their picture taken by this budding photographer.

By the time he was in junior high school, Williams had a fine Leica camera. After high school, his rebellion years were not filled with protests but rather he turned his back on technology and created devices that he affectionately calls his Frankenstein cameras. He took the housing of 1930’s Bellows cameras and the lens of 1950’s Rangefinder cameras added little supporting legs and wrapped the device in duct tape. According to Williams, theft was never an issue with his ugly but functional creations.

“I valued that photographs got saved. There is a genealogy element to photography. I noticed that everyone got into the history books through photography. It is a huge privilege and responsibility to be the keeper of the moments,” said Williams.

Today, Williams is an advocate of both technology and science and uses a Nikon D70 digital camera as well as his favorite Folmer and Schwing banquet camera that produces 12 x 20 hyper-real, detailed photographs that Williams likens to looking at images through a microscope.

For the last four generations, the surname Williams has been synonymous with photographer. Williams’ great grandfather owned a hardware store in Greenville, sold cameras and had a home darkroom. His grandfather was a portrait photographer and Fort Worth city engineer, using photography in his job. From 1905-1907, he attended the University of Texas (UT) and photographed his way through college. His dorm room and Austin capital photographic series is currently displayed at the Harry Ramson Center at UT. In the 1930s just prior to the war, his father photographed many women at work from telephone operators to waitresses.

“The culture makes the photographer, and I feel as thought I am a conduit to the culture. I am telling posterity what it is like to be alive in our time,” said Williams.

As a young boy with a creative eye, Williams discovered that a street light creates a little room, and he and his friends played in the evenings in this little space that he describes more as an interior than an exterior. Today he is still playing at night under the moon, silhouetted under the warm glow of the street lights. He creates night triptychs of buildings, using long-time exposures of 10-30 minutes, and he adds the radiance of artificial light to give a full image with texture and touch-ability.

“Photographs are messages in a bottle, sent from the island of our mortality to the unborn so that they will know who we are, know our strengths, our frailties, and share our humanness.

“I do not teach photography per se. I teach each and every student, young and old, about what it is to be alive here and now. I express to them the importance of leaving behind something about their thoughts and world, something more than the usual headstone epitaph,” said Williams.

For more information about the Collin Photography Department, call 972-881-5727.

Heather Darrow is a writer in public relations at Collin County Community College.