Williams, Troy

Troy Williams’s series I Want to Know What Love Is, I Want You to Show Me is strongly influenced by late adolescence, a time when everything is very intense and fantasies are heroic and often based on slices of popular culture. In Williams’ hyper-real images, references to 1970s and 80s television shows and movies such as ET and Close Encounters mix with lyrical expressions of teenage romance such as love declared in graffiti or fireworks. The title of the series is taken from lyrics to a popular 1980s ballad by the band Foreigner. With tongue-in-cheek humor, even the images Williams bases on horror films have a transparent quality that reveals the snickering hand that created them. Proclaiming the time of adolescence to be powerful, mystical, and earnest, Williams’ photographs bring forth the murky stages of youth that usually end up as quasi-vivid memories of inflated heroics and passion.

Raised in Brookings, South Dakota, Troy Williams graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (BFA) in 2002. He is the recipient of a 2003/04 MCAD/Jerome Fellowship. His works have been exhibited in Minneapolis at Intermedia Arts and the Minnesota Center for Photography, and in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and Art Boat for 1/Quarterly Space. His first solo show was in December 2006 at MUDIMAdrie in Antwerp, Belgium.