1947-2013

Casey Williams was a Houston native known for taking beautiful photographs of mundane objects. Though he started with black and white, he transitioned to color, and in many cases, carefully and subtly hand-tinted the photographs. His imagery consisted of things that most people don’t ever notice - microwave towers, graffiti, discarded trash and ship hulls. He cropped the images in a manner that makes the viewer look twice to understand what is being presented. In some cases, the images are flat, while in others, they have an illusion of depth. He was able to turn the ordinary into something special through composition and color. The large-scale format he preferred made the work powerful and transfixing.

Williams received his BFA from the University of Texas in 1970 and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute 1976. He taught photography at the University of North Texas for several years before returning to Houston in the late 1970s to start a photography program at the MFAH’s Glassell school. He had numerous gallery and museum exhibitions throughout his career including a three-person show at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in 2002 entitled Industrial Ingenuity.

Williams’s art may be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, the Witte Museum in San Antonio, the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and The Museum of Modern Art in NY.