Elias Williams is a photographer born, raised and working in New York City. Through long-term portrait-based projects he celebrates historically underrepresented communities referencing lived experiences through the nuances of music, pride, race and resilience. His photographs have been showcased at the Photoville Festival, International Photo Festival Leiden, the Morris Museum, and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Museum of the City of New York. His clients include Apple, Bloomberg Markets, Essence, HuffPost, Instagram, National Geographic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, TIME and The Wall Street Journal among others. Williams is also a recipient of the Bronx Council on the Arts’s Bronx Recognizes Its Own (BRIO) award (2017), Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellowship (2017), World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass participant (2020) and Center of Photography at Woodstock Artist-in-Residence (2022).
Presented by National Geographic
In a nation with a history of racist housing policies, this community became an enduring exception — and a point of pride.
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New York City’s Spring 2020 graduates, from pre-k to medical school, talk about having their traditional commencement ceremonies altered and their experiences in quarantine, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
As part of the OPEN DOORS arts and justice initiative, the Reality Poets are men who have been harmed by gun violence using storytelling, hip-hop, and the spoken word, challenging their audiences to combat the injustice that breeds violence in New York City neighborhoods.
Artist walkthrough of the Clayton Sisterhood Project exhibition in Roy Wilkins Park led by Laila Annmarie Stevens as part of Juneteenth in Queens
Learn MoreIn honor of Juneteenth, we held a special walkthrough of the Clayton Sisterhood Project exhibition in Roy Wilkins Park led by artist Laila Annmarie Stevens in conversation with photographer, Elias Williams.
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