A Wicked Commerce: The U.S. and the Atlantic Slave Trade Through the Lens of William Earle Williams (September 21, 2022 - May 21, 2023)

William Earle Williams exposes the often obscured histories of chattel slavery in the US. Drawing upon archives, material culture, and oral histories he identifies what he calls uncelebrated, unheralded, and anonymous sites of remembrance and uses photography to recover their stories.

Closer to the traditions of song, storytelling, and poetry than documentary photography, Williams’s work imparts knowledge and understanding by fostering a sense of place. His images are devoid of human presence – blurring past and present and provoking deeper personal connections to the landscapes. They compel one to move beyond the intellectual and engage physically and emotionally with memories embedded in the landscape.

A Wicked Commerce presents Williams’s examination of slavery in the US within its wider global context and the intersections with its partners in the Atlantic Slave Trade – Britain and its Caribbean colonies. These pictures uncover the infrastructures that fueled the trade and positioned Britain and the US as industrial powers, simultaneously creating an institution that damaged innumerable lives and continues to persist in their physical and social landscapes.

The exhibition continues to be available as an online virtual tour and can be experienced here: A Wicked Commerce Virtual Tour