Artist Pat Ward Williams 'Accused/Blowtorch/Padlock'

Artist Pat Ward Williams believes “that essentially all art is propaganda. It is an artist getting you to think about those things that are right and true” (Curtis, 2016). As a degreed artist, Williams realized that to convey the messages of things that were “right and true,” her camera alone was not always able to adequately capture information that extended beyond the documentary photochemical capabilities of photography. Concerned about the loss of connection between the camera and the information that lay beyond the captured image and surface impressions, Williams experimented with opening the messages of documented historical moments through skewed perspective same scene collages, leading to her evolution of the mixed-media artwork that includes Accused/Blowtorch/Padlock (1986).
Considered Williams' most famous work, Accused/Blowtorch/Padlock, is soul searing and infinitely disturbing. The 1986 mixed media art piece presents four photographs of a black man's tortured body chained to a tree, and the black and white images are …show more content…
First exhibited in 1987, “Accused/Blowtorch/Padlock” is not straight photography, because Williams has used formal manipulation of media and materials to distance the central image from the parts of its subject to make a visual comment on accusation, punishment, and blackness. In concert, while the images used in “Accused” work to indict lynching, the photographs alone never speak for themselves. Rather, by framing the rephotographed images in a battered wooden casement that simulates a grouping of attached timeworn window frames, Williams uses the photographs for great emotional effect by invoking a synesthetic collective memory and transformative witnessing of the spectacle of the inscription of pain and hatred on the black male