Artist Lecture and Opening Reception: Wednesday, April 4, 2007 – 6 pm

A Song for Unsung Heroes: African American Soldiers in the Civil War will be on display at the Mary Schiller Myers School of Art’s Emily Davis Gallery from April 2-25, 2007. The exhibition, which is the culmination of a decade of work by photographer William Earle Williams, is at its second stop of a three year tour. Williams will be at the Myers School of Art to lecture on his work as part of the Bidwell Visiting Artist Lecture series on Wednesday, April 4 at 6 pm in the auditorium of Folk Hall (150 E. Exchange St., Akron). An opening reception for the exhibition will follow, from 7:30-9 pm. All events are free and open to the public.

Williams work in these photographs seeks to bring recognition to the contribution of African American troops to the Union victory. African American soldiers, who were over 180,000 strong, have been considerably underrepresented in the documentation of the Civil War. As Williams noted while creating the series Gettysburg: A Journey in Time (1986), the stories of the sites that serve as relevant landmarks in the story of minority soldiers were given little to no mention in historical documentation. The combination of these realities served as the motivation for Unsung Heroes, as he asked himself, “Are these sites not as equally important to our country’s history?” Williams’ responded by creating a pictorial documentation of these notable landmarks and a historical record of a forgotten national memory.

Throughout the five sections of the exhibition, Williams has depicted a wide span of important sites, from the most prominent, such as Port Hudson and Fort Blakely, to the training camps and fields of Virginia and Kentucky, “…where these men became soldiers. My photographs honor their memory, give a precise description of the place, and provide a visual means to understand that it was in these places and landscapes that the moral and legal groundwork for modern black civil rights and civil rights for all Americans were established.” With this collection, Williams hopes to dispel any myth that African Americans gained their freedom and citizenship without having earned them.

Each of the 60 photographs included in Unsung Heroes has a story behind it, which Williams has included in a brief caption following each image. These stories are often subtle, yet the black and white imagery is dimensional and shows a true attention to and appreciation of the national landscape. This series was shot using large-format cameras.

Williams was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003-2004, during which much of Unsung Heroes was created. Recently, Williams has been granted a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, as well as a Pennsylvania Council of the Arts Fellowship. His work has been exhibited in many major institutions, such as the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Smithsonian, and his photographs can be found in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Williams served on the national board of the Society for Photographic Education from 1997-2003. He is currently a professor of fine arts and curator of photography at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania, where he has been since 1978.

The Bidwell Visiting Artists Program has been established by Fred and Laura Bidwell to twice annually bring visiting photographers and artists to The University of Akron to present public lectures and master classes with students in the Mary Schiller Myers School of Art. Laura is a 1976 graduate of UA’s Graphic Design Program. Fred and Laura Bidwell share a great interest in photography. Their generous philanthropy continues to enrich the arts and communities in Northeast Ohio.