Village Vanguards (Before You Go)
Troy Williams
2022 — New York City, USA
About this series
I fear that New York City is disappearing. Its culture is being white washed and replaced with glass skyscrapers. The unique and complicated paradise feels like it is slipping towards something suburban and recognizable rather than something wildly surprising and luminous. Don’t get me wrong though, I believe in this city. Its energy is always churning. Its artists and cultural shape shifters continue to ignite and change our perceptions of what it means to be alive at this moment in time. We are resilient! But there is something sinister in the air. Maybe it’s new or maybe it’s a continuation of a slow building effort to silence individuality and delightful chaos. Whatever it is, I don’t want it to happen before I have the chance to document the individuals who make my city, New York City.
Photographer: Troy Williams
Nationality: American
Based in: NYC, USA
Website: www.troywilliams.love
Instagram: @trooooooooooooooooooooooooy
Troy Williams (1975) is an American photographer based in New York City.
Williams was born in Brookings, South Dakota. He studied at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where he received his BFA in photography. He is the recipient of a 2003/04 MCAD/Jerome Fellowship. His murky and mystical adolescence series “I Want to Know What Love Is, I Want You to Show Me” was included in the 2006 exhibition “Anticipation” at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. In 2006 he relocated to New York City where his photographic practice morphed into street portraits that are interested in heightening the enduring energy, resilience, creativity, and relentless individuality that defines modern New York City.
Williams’s work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Minnesota Center for Photography in Minneapolis as well as internationally in Belgium and Germany. His work is held in collection at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.