Festival on the Parkway

Daniel S. Williams, artist

born 1942

Festival on the Parkway, 1991

Where object was made: Brooklyn, New York, United States

Material/technique: chromogenic color print (Ektacolor™ Supra)

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 320 x 460 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 508 x 635 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 12 5/8 x 18 1/8 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 20 x 25 in

Credit line: Museum purchase

Accession number: 1993.0004

Not on display

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Images

Label texts

Art and Activism: 50 Years of Africana Studies at KU

Daniel S. Williams’s photograph represents a Caribbean-American Labor Day Festival in Brooklyn, New York. This image encapsulates some of the complexity of Diasporic legacies: the people represented here descend from a lineage that began in Africa, then traveled to the Caribbean and eventually landed in Brooklyn. This carnival began in Harlem in the 1930s and was originally a pre-Lenten festival that took place in February. Due to the cold, it was originally held inside, but eventually took to the streets each year on Labor Day with costumed parades to music. Williams studied painting with abstract artist Ad Reinhardt but later pivoted to photography. His works typically depict the lives of African American people, and he had the first one-person photography show at the Museum of Harlem in 1975.

Written by Liz James

Brosseau Center for Learning: In Conversation with the 2016 KU Common Book

“The black world was expanding before me, and I could see now that the world was more than a photonegative of that of the people who believe they are white.” ("Between the World and Me," p. 42)

Dan Williams studied painting at Brooklyn College and photography at the University of Oregon; he teaches at Ohio University. In 1993 he was the Langston Hughes Visiting Professor at the University of Kansas. Williams, in photographing what he knows, depicts aspects of the everyday life of African Americans. He is concerned both with creating positive images of his subjects and with making sure his photographs empower them.
The subject of this photograph is a Caribbean-American Labor Day Fest in Brooklyn, New York.