Biography

John Williams biographical info

Introduction

Photography and history have been intertwined in my consciousness for most of my adult life. About the time in the 1950s that I was first becoming aware of A.J.P Taylor, E.W. Hobsbawm and Barbara Tuchmann, I was no less aware of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eugene Smith and the photographers who together made up the catalogue and exhibition known as the Family of Man.

I have moved on since those days. As a practising historian my historical reading list is nowadays become much more extensive, far more eclectic and centred on primary sources. In the same way, my photographic heroes of the 1950s and 60s are no longer so dominant as was once the case: there is something too theatrical and strangely exploitative in the work of Gene Smith while Cartier-Bresson's slick formalism is no longer wholly to my taste. If I were to name influences, I would find myself thinking of Werner Bischoff, Robert Frank and Andre Kertesz; a strange mix it is true, but central Europeans all of them and not strange for a displaced Anglo-Celt who sees Mitteleuropa as a kind of spiritual home.

If you were to ask me what I think I am, I would be forced to answer: "An historian who makes pictures and a picture maker who writes history". In the one, using the written record, I attempt to discover how human beings survive in a time and space which is not wholly of their creation but of which they form an integral part. In the other, using the empirical evidence that surrounds me, I attempt to discover how human beings survive in a time and space which is not wholly of their creation but of which they form an integral part.

The above is not a monumental typographical error or a slip of fingers attempting to manipulate a word processor. It is a statement of fact. In photographing I care nothing for making art, but am forever conscious that at the moment the shutter completes its traverse of the film plane the image is already locked in the past. It is history; my history to be true, and not necessarily an history of interest to you any more than the history I write might be so.

History can never be absolute fact, any more than photography tells truths or simply describes facts. The best the individual photographer/historian can hope for is to accumulate and interpret aspects of time and place. In his or her turn, the viewer-cum-reader brings to the image-cum-text a raft of accumulated beliefs and prejudices that enable the possibility of a whole new set of readings and interpretations beyond those imagined by the author.

Should it be otherwise? Not for me.

Introduction to "Line Zero" (UNSW Press 2004)

A Tram on Line Zero - a Beach in Winter

I love Vienna. It was there, on 12 September 2001, that the cover photo for this book was taken. Two friends were with me in a taxi as we cruised down the Ungargasse, past the Gasthaus where Beethoven put the finishing touches to his Choral Symphony and the house, near the Italian Embassy, where the Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann had once lived and worked.

High culture was not on our minds that night. We were still in shock. The day before we'd watched, horrified, as the events at the WTC unfolded on TV. And as we rode that taxi, it seemed that the gemütlich Vienna of Strauss waltzes, coffee houses and wine gardens had given way to the Vienna of Harry Lime. I suppose my mood was nihilistic when I saw that tram, or rather the crude circles of light which framed it. Ligne Null - Line Zero. A Streetcar Named Nothing on the line to nowhere.

I took the shot.

Later I was told that I had it wrong. Vienna's tram lines are not numbered, but lettered. I had photographed a tram on line 'O', as between 'N' and 'P'. Did this matter? I don't think so. The raison d'être of a photograph is often based in false reasoning. For me this will always be the tram on Line Zero and the photograph the harbinger for two terrible years.

Just twelve months later Ingeborg Tyssen - photographer extraordinaire and my partner and inspiration for 28 years - was dead. As I write I am still mourning, yet ever more conscious of the realisation that life goes on. The Vienna tram was perhaps the last photograph of mine Ingeborg saw. She was a sensitive and intelligent reader of pictures and moved by it. Yet spooked at the same time. I won't go further.

As a counterpoint to the bleak mood of the Vienna tram, I sought an image of contrary opacity for the back cover, but of similar mood. Until I read what Gael Newton wrote about my Bondi picture from 1971, I was undecided.

Gael saw a meaning that explained the picture to me. I'd always seen it in formalistic terms and missed the content. Her reading was far more subtle and accurate: she was able to pick on a mood of dislocation I remember experiencing over thirty years ago, a mood that had unconsciously affected my picture-making choices.

Two pictures one bright one dark, sharing similar moods and even similar formal elements - and both, to boot, misread to varying extents by the author. So what? I think that leaving yourself open to the correction of your own misreadings can be one of the most confusingly satisfying things about making work (I find much usage of the word 'art' presumptive, so I don't use it). Whether writing or making pictures, once a work is out there it's no longer yours. Once out there, it has a life of its own. As Gael Newton has done, the viewer/reader can bring another set of experiences and understanding to the image/text which can only enrichen the work.

You can do that too, if you so choose.