I photographed my first Paul Revere Williams buildings in December 2016, the identical month it was introduced that he had been posthumously awarded the 2017 AIA Gold Medal. Throughout his lifetime, Williams was the primary Black architect to attain many issues. Now, virtually 40 years after his demise, right here was one other. His being the primary Black architect to be awarded the Gold Medal has proved to be a double-edged sword; that novelty piques folks’s curiosity in Williams’s story however generally obscures the genius of the work itself.
Williams had an unlimited and different profession. He ran his personal observe from 1923 to 1973 and designed roughly 3,000 constructions. Although he’s finest identified for his grand revivalist mansions, he additionally designed small personal residences, public housing tasks, banks, hospitals, church buildings, and faculties, labored in lots of up to date types, and had an energetic curiosity in revolutionary supplies. His versatility was one other blended blessing; it saved him in enterprise for 50 years but in addition made his work tough to quantify. Despite his innumerable contributions to the sphere of structure, his work has largely been not noted of the dialog.
The Gold Medal appeared to set a number of issues in movement; I’ve watched with awe and delight as numerous initiatives, articles, and tasks about Williams and his work have appeared within the years since. My undertaking has been one small a part of a momentous and multifaceted effort to resume Williams’s repute and be sure that our understanding of his work continues to develop.
My e book, Concerning Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View (Angel Metropolis Press, 2020) was revealed final September. The e book comprises almost 250 images of Paul Revere Williams-designed constructions in Southern California and Las Vegas from 2016 by 2020. Three months prior, in June, the Getty Analysis Institute and the USC Faculty of Structure introduced that that they had collectively acquired Williams’s archives, lengthy thought by many to have been misplaced in a hearth in the course of the 1992 L.A. rebellion. I benefited enormously from this coincidental timing; my e book was buoyed by the upsurge of curiosity in Williams and his work that adopted the announcement. I spent the subsequent a number of months on a digital e book tour, sharing my work with audiences throughout the US from a makeshift desk in my bed room.
Now that book-related engagements have begun to taper off, I’ve been considering rather a lot about what’s subsequent. My e book is finished, however my quest doesn’t really feel full. There are extra Williams-designed constructions I’d prefer to {photograph}, and the archive, which can ultimately be accessible to the general public, beckons. I don’t but know what type these continued investigations will take, however I pledge myself to the hassle—Williams’s immense, outstanding physique of labor deserves and rewards an prolonged dedication.
This text initially appeared on our interiors and design web site, aninteriormag.com.
