Pat Ward Williams

Pat Ward Williams (b. 1948)
Pat Ward Williams in 2014
Born	1948
Nationality	American
Education	BFA Moore College of Art and Design, MFA Maryland Institute College of Art
Known for	Photography, Public Art

Pat Ward Williams (born 1948) is an African-American photographer whose work often engages with the complexities of race, gender, and history. In addition to her smaller-scale photographs and installations, she has designed three public artworks in Los Angeles.

Williams holds a BFA from Moore College of Art and Design (1982) and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (1987).

One of Williams’ best known works is Accused/Blowtorch/Padlock (1986), which consists of an image of a black man tied to a tree (originally published in Life magazine in 1937 and not attributed to a specific photographer) surrounded by text expressing the artist’s reaction to this image.

Williams has explained her intent in the work and how that relates to the title of the piece: “I force the viewer to look at what is really going on by dissecting the important body of information and by directing with text what the viewer should notice: the tied hands (accused), the scarred back (blowtorch), and the lock, chain, and tree (padlock).” Art historian Dora Apel has argued that in including the text of her own response to the image, Williams “attempts to define for the viewer the relationship between violence, spectacle, and public representation.”

Accused/Blowtorch/Padlock has been included in exhibitions such as The Decade Show, a large-scale collaborative exhibition by the New Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art as well as in Art, Women, California 1950-2000: Parallels and Intersections at the San Jose Museum of Art.

Williams was part of the Photo-Active Feminist Visiting Artists 1998-99 Series, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and The University of Michigan School of Art and Design and Women's Studies Program. The group of artists, which also included Paula Allen, Barbara Kruger, Susan Meiselas, Connie Samaras, Kathy Constantinides, Wendy Ewald, and Marilyn Zimmerman, were chosen for their engagement with social and political issues in their work and traveled to the University of Michigan to present their work to students and the community.