Founder – Inner Light Photographic Society
Artist Statement:
The element of light being the greatest mystery draws the soul of man to a creative point beyond any casual order of life. The mystery of light being as it is can only intensity that deeper concept of creative means and transition can indeed find its way through the ‘time and space’ perspective. This is how I saw photography early in my career and how I see it every day. I still create photographs with my phone camera. Using the element of light you can capture an image, stopping a moment in time that you can never bring back again. In an instant, it will never be the same. With photography you capture those moments that have become history in the images of Time!
Artist Bio:
Shedrich Williames was born in Detroit, Michigan and became interested in photography by the age of nine. He initially used a Brownie Hawkeye camera. From that point on and under his grandmother’s influence he pursued a lifelong passion for photography. Williames settled in Portland, Oregon at the age of eighteen. Pursuing his passion, he attended classes and workshops with notable photographers such as Wynn Bullock (1902-1975), Ansel Adams (1902-1984), Ruth Bernhard (1905-2006) and Jerry Uelsmann, who was born the same year in Detroit in 1934. Bernhard became a lifelong friend and influenced Williames interest in nude studies of the human figure.
By 1970 he began to exhibit his work in public venues and two years later opened a photography gallery in Oregon City called the Shado Gallery. He also started the Phoenix Photographic Workshop and began teaching and mentoring young photographers. His subject matter includes nudes, still-life, especially floral and natural objects as well as the landscape. In 1986 Williames founded the Inner Light Photographic Society to support and encourage excellence in fine art photographers.
In a career spanning over sixty years, Shedrich Williames has been included in over four hundred exhibitions and his work is in the permanent collections of some of the leading museums and art institutions in the country and Europe. These include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Tacoma Art Museum, Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay, OR, San Jose Museum of Art, Luther College Fine Art Collection, McHenry Public Library, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, Pacific University, Oregon, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and others.
Stolen Moments: The Photography of Shedrich Williames
Solo exhibition is open now through January 2021 at Cascadia Art Museum, Edmonds, WA.
https://www.cascadiaartmuseum.org/exhibition/stolen-moments-the-photography-of-shedrich-williames/