Their Kindred Earth: Photographs by William Earle Williams

Land holds history. Some histories are better known than others, preserved by those who valued particular stories and wanted them remembered. What do we know about the land we live on? Who preceded us and what transpired? History books leave holes and silences along with assumptions that have been passed down for generations. This exhibition aims to fill some of the absences by sharing lesser-known stories about Connecticut and its connections to other regions that played a role in bringing people of color to the shores of the future United States. Art has the power to help us see, and to encourage us to imagine the presence of those who had no agency or opportunity to record their own histories.

Over the past forty years artist William Earle Williams (born 1950) has made sites of African American history more visible through his exquisite photographs. Mentored in the 1970s by the famed photographer Walker Evans, who had a home in Lyme, Williams attended the Yale School of Art at Evans’s suggestion. From that Connecticut inception, Williams embarked on a decades-long journey to identify and photograph places across the country that hold histories of enslavement, the Underground Railroad, and emancipation. Many remain unmarked and largely overlooked in a society that has long ignored Black history. Williams returned to Connecticut in 2011 to visit the Florence Griswold Museum’s exhibition The Exacting Eye of Walker Evans. At that time, he made photographs of alleged sites of the Underground Railroad on Lyme Street.

In 2021 Williams reconnected with the Museum through his interest in Witness Stones Old Lyme, a local initiative that documents and shares research about histories of local enslavement via a website and physical “stones.” These small brass markers denote where enslaved people lived and worked in the Lyme area, including three on the Museum’s front lawn, commemorating those who labored in a house that once stood where the Griswold House is now located. Inspired by the opportunity to deepen understanding about sites of enslavement and explore untold stories of the Black Americans who lived, labored, and traveled through Old Lyme on their route to freedom, the Museum’s Curator of Exhibitions Jennifer “Jenny” Stettler Parsons, Ph.D. invited Williams to return as Artist-in-Residence to revisit his research and make new photographs that would bring visibility to these Connecticut histories.
As the 2023-25 Artist-in-Residence, Williams continues his journey in Connecticut, creating photographs that bring visibility and pay tribute to the unrecognized people who contributed to this society and its landscape. His evocative photographs help us see beyond our familiar conceptions of places we know so well, and to see them anew.

If landscapes could speak, what would they tell us?

William Earle Williams (born 1950) is the Audrey A. and John L. Dusseau Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts and Curator of Photography at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania. His photographs have been widely exhibited including group and solo exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art, George Eastman House, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The National Gallery, Smith College and Center for Documentary Studies- Duke University. His work is represented in many public collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and National Gallery Washington, DC. Williams has received individual artist fellowships from the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. williamearlewilliams.com

Images: 1) William Earle Williams, Monument, Freedom’s Crossing, New York City, 2024. Archival digital ink print, 22 x 22 in. Courtesy of the artist; 2) William Earle Williams, Witness Stones at the Florence Griswold House and Museum, 2023. Archival ink print. Courtesy of the artist; 3) William Earle Williams, Uncas’s Leap, Norwich, Connecticut, 2023. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist; 4) William Earle Williams, Stairway, Prudence Crandall School, Canterbury, Connecticut, 2023. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist; 5) Photograph of William Earle Williams. Courtesy of the artist

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This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of CT Humanities, HSB, Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts, Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut, as well as donors to the Exhibition Fund and the Annual Fund. Media sponsor: WSHU Public Radio.