Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) presents "Why the Night? Photography after Dark," a lecture by photographer Jeff Brouws. Brouws' work appears in WCMA's exhibition Wait Until Dark: Night Photography from the Collection of Jay Richard DiBiaso. This event will take place in WCMA's auditorium on Wednesday, April 9, 2003, at 4 p.m., and the public is invited to attend.

"I am grateful to Jay DiBiaso for making this selection of photographs available to us for this exhibition and to photographer Jeff Brouws for his willingness to speak about his photography," says Director Linda Shearer. "It is always a special opportunity for our students and visitors to learn what artists have to say about their own work. In light of his extraordinary photographs, I am very much looking forward to hearing him."

Brouws: American Culture Photographer

New York-based Jeff Brouws, a self-taught photographer, has taken American culture as his subject for the past fifteen years. Drawn to what cultural anthropologists call TOADS—Temporary, Obsolete, Abandoned, Derelict Sites—he finds and creates beauty from the mundane and overlooked. Brouws' images often depict distressed equipment, abandoned signage, and defunct motels. Night photographs make up a large part of Brouws' two recent series, Highway: America's Endless Dream and Inside the Live Reptile House.

Wait Until Dark: Exhibition Overview

Wait Until Dark presents a range of photographs, both in color and black and white, selected from the photography collection of Jay Richard DiBiaso, Williams College Class of 1978. The word photography comes from the Greek and means "writing with light." In the creation of night images, this definition takes on new connotations with the natural restrictions and artificial lighting conditions that the artists must necessarily manipulate after dark. The photographer's results in this milieu evoke a wide variety of sensations—pending danger, overwhelming curiosity, and profound beauty. The other artists included in Wait Until Dark are Lewis Baltz, Harvey Caplin, William Greiner, Todd Hido, Michael Kenna, David Levinthal, O. Winston Link, Richard Misrach, Jules Shulman, George Tice, Thomas Tulis, and Henry Wessel.

Publicity Photographs Available

A copy of Brouws' Family Accommodations, Fresno, California (1990) is available for use. Publicity images for this event and other exhibitions can be found at www.wcma.org/press.

The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Contact: Jonathan Cannon, Public Relations Coordinator
413.597.3178; WCMA@williams.edu