Architecture came first. Frantic study in Plymouth. Modernism consumed. Walter Gropius and Bauhaus. Le Corbusier, Aldo Rossi. Mies Van de Rohe.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and William Morris added craft.
Edward Hopper and Francis Bacon gave colour.
Living In Newcastle, it’s powerful industrial past evident everywhere. Charismatic and hard. History and documentary on the streets, opening the magical door to photography.
Henri Cartier Bresson, Andre Kertesz, Robert Doisneau. Capa and McCullin all showed at The Side Gallery and it’s vaudevillian cinema played Max Ophuls, Nicolas Ray, Alain Resnais and Bergman.
Gary Winogrand, Lee Freidlander, Harry Callahan and Bruce Davidson’s photography led to a fascination with independent film.
Antonioni, Bertolucci, Rossolini. Then Godard, Truffaut, Cassavetes, Woody Allen, Scorsese and Coppola.
These fabulous influences shaped an extraordinary two years of study at the Royal College of Art. Experimental and without boundaries. Pure artistic thought.
African rhythms came next to accompany the short films.
Thomas Mapfumo, Hugh Masakela and Fela Kuti, leading inevitably to Jazz.
Miles Davis, Coltrane, Don Cherry, Keith Jarrett.
Later photographing Herbie Hancock at a dark urban location for his Japanese record label, he spoke about his fascinating experience with Antonioni in London 1968 making ‘Blow-Up’ for which he wrote the soundtrack.
The Hip Hop scene, rave culture, electronic dance music, drum and bass. Photographing Shy FX and T Power feeling the new energy of culturally significant music. It all came together.
Photography, film, music, architecture, the abstract deconstructed photo based large scale works, street art projects. The wonder never stops.
Pete Williams
The collections
The Musicians category is a selection taken from photographs made between 1988-2007. They were generally shot for record labels and music magazines, particularly Straight No Chaser.
During 2008, I started to print a selection of these images using a vintage silver gelatin process and traditional sizes of 16 x 20 and 20 x 24 inches. They were finished using acid free archival materials to prepare them for an exhibition in Shoreditch, London in 2010.
I have since continued printing from the archive including new portraits and adding them to this category as and when they are made.
The Portrait selection relates to my continual fascination for portraiture. They date from 1980 to the present and are produced in a variety of sizes and printed chemically as silver gelatin lith prints, duratran transparencies or giclee ink jet prints if shot on a digital format.
Large Works is a selection of prints made from the art archive that I started producing from 1986 whilst studying at the Royal College of Art in London.
Ranging in size from 76 x 76cm to 305 x 609cm, they are produced from a variety of film formats and printed chemically as silver gelatin lith prints, colour duratran transparencies and giclee ink jet. The exception is the 1984 Battersea Power Station print, which is made using the wonderful and now rare dye transfer process.