Category Archives: Press Releases

The Book Of…[Your Name Here]

The Book Of … is a series of photography books by American artist LG Williams. The Book Of [Your Name Here] series, originating in January 2015, is an artistic re-examination of the “miracle” of the daguerreotype photograph, in which the artist reaches back to the birth of photography.

On August 19, 1839 the French Academy of Sciences announced the invention of the daguerreotype by the scene painter and physicist Louis-Jaques-Mande Daguerre (1787-1851). Word of the discovery spread swiftly, and the daguerreotype photography enjoyed great popularity until the 1850s, especially in America where the process was free from patent restrictions.

While there was great demand for portraits captured by the “miracle” of photography, early daguerreotype technology had its shortcomings. The necessarily long exposure times that were required to capture an image, fifteen minutes on average under bright lights, led to necessarily inevitable lacunae in representing the subject. The resulting single image daguerreotypes are de facto composites of the lapsed long exposure time, but not, as was purported, scientifically captured replicas of both time and image.

This publication and series presents an opportunity for Williams to provide an artistic, political, and social perspective on the missing truths, images, and loss of time that occurred during the age of Daguerre. In other words, each book from this single-portrait-series consists of hundreds of continuous images during a fifteen-minute stretch of time, or just about as many images as the artist could take as fast as possible using his out-dated FujiFilm FinePix Z70 3-MP Digital Camera. From this historical perspective, Williams’ series points to the limitations of daguerreotype photography with the seemingly limitless possibilities of contemporary analogue-image capture and production.

The books are published by PCP Press and available on Amazon.com.

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FIAC 2016 Grand Palais PARIS:
LG Williams and The Estate of LG Williams (2013) — Massimo De Carlo And Elmgreen & Dragset (2016)

Click here for large PDF version

“LG” Cap — Full Disclosure

Los Angeles artists Vonn Sumner and LG Williams

Historians of Art and The Society of Contemporary Art Historians (SCAH) should know that the idea of the “LG” cap originally belongs to Los Angeles artist Vonn Sumner via artist Dave Hollowell c.1998-99.

Photo by Eric Minh Swenson (EMS)

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Los Angeles Artist LG Williams Thanks DNC Wikileaks Contributors With Artwork

Press Release — For Immediate Release July 26, 2016

LG Williams and The Estate of LG Williams™, Thank You 2015-16 DNC Contributors!, 2016, Reflective Ink on Diamond Grade Reflective Sheeting on Heavy-Duty Aluminium with Aluminium Backing		“After reading through a couple of the Wikileaks DNC documents, I decided to make this heart-felt artistic gesture of appreciation. I want every Democratic donor to know that I am grateful for all their contributions,” Williams said.“LG had an artistic epiphany, there is no other way to explain it. This beautiful image came to his mind. He had to make this artwork for this generous group of people, the DNC donors, who just got rudely outed,” said the Newport Beach gallerist Jamie Brooks. “This is me in the picture, giving my gratitude to all of the DNC donors in the country!” the artist said. The eponymous artwork will most certainly become a major art crowd-pleaser amongst the DNC contributors and art collectors, and a permanent fixture of the national art exhibition circuit in the foreseeable future. It is worth noting that during his prolonged emerging career, Williams has extended many thanks to his audience, colleagues, patrons, benefactors and sheer luck. Among his earlier expressions of gratitude are: Thank You For Coming! (1997), Thank God I’m Not In New York! (2002), Thank God!… (2002, 2010, 2013 and 2014), Calling All Aliens (2009), To My Benefactors and Supporters (2011), and, most recently, Thank You In Advance (2014). MacArthur Award winning art critic and left-wing radical, Dave Hickey, the so-called “pirate of contemporary art criticism,” applauded the new artwork as “really freakin brilliant!” He continued, “Williams’ artwork strangely and simultaneously evokes all the beauty, sublimity and generosity expressed in the DNC political platform. This is indeed epic visual art free of any political ideology or jargon.” “Ya know what I’m saying?”—Hickey concluded. “Hand it to Williams, this gesture will become the iconic image of 2016 election year, the must-have object that will unite in solidarity every democratic art collection across the country”. .# # # # #

NEWPORT BEACH CA – The Los Angeles artist LG Williams has just created a new artwork celebrating the trove of 19,252 internal DNC-related emails released last week by WikiLeaks. The emails reveal how the drive for big money donors consumes the DNC. The artwork, entitled Thank You 2015-16 DNC Contributors!, portrays the artist, who was included in the 2011 Venice Biennial Internet Pavilion, “signing,” or manually communicating the physical gesture of “thanks” or “thank you” in American Sign Language to the DNC contributors. More specifically, the artist is depicted with his left hand near his lips, gesturing it forward towards the different tiers of donors who recently were unexpectedly exposed for simply giving money to the Democratic National Committee. Or, to put it more simply, imagine Williams blowing a kiss to all the monied DNC donors across the nation, and you have an accurate grasp of the artwork — which is currently for sale in a limited edition by Jamie Brooks Fine Art in Costa Mesa, CA.