The Galleries at Moore
Pat Ward Williams Virtual Tour:
 Accused/Blowtorch/Padlock
1986
magazine page, silver prints, film positive, windowframe, tarpaper, text, 64" x 72"
Ghosts That Smell like CornbreadNorth Avenue ProjectVirtual TourGalleries Directory Text from A Narrative Chronology by Moira Roth
Italicized text by Pat Ward Williams
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Accused/Blowtorch/Padlock This work consists of a photographic reproduction and three enlarged details of the photograph, surrounded by tarpaper with handwritten text. In the center are four photographs in a windowframe. The photograph in the windowframe to the left is torn from a book, The Best of Life. Below the photograph is this caption:”Accused in 1937 of murdering a white Mississippi man, this black man was tortured with a blowtorch and then lynched.” To the right are three details of the photograph; across these three photographs is printed “ACCUSED/BLOWTORCH/PADLOCK” in large red letters.

Each time the work is exhibited, Williams changes the text slightly.

I used a combination of dominant and subordinate pictures. I force the viewer to look at what is really going on by dissecting the important body of information and by directing with text what the viewer should notice: the tied hands (accused). the scarred back (blowtorch). an~ the lock, chain, and tree (padlock) [1987].