William Widmer Photography

Name: William Widmer Photography
Address: San Fransisco, CA, US
Telephone: +14155330536

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William Widmer Photography

William Widmer is a narrative photographer based in New Orleans and Chicago. He specializes in photoj Mr.

William Widmer is a narrative photographer based in New Orleans, Louisiana and Chicago, Illinois. He's a regular contributor to The New York Times and covers news and feature stories throughout the South. Much of his work investigates the human ecology of the Gulf Coast region and the effects that environmental change holds for its inhabitants. Widmer is represented by Redux Pictures and available for commercial and editorial commissions.

12/17/2021

The Dawson Village Apartments complex suffered catastrophic damage after the tornado tore through town. The buildings lacked any sort of cellars or storm shelters so the residents who weren’t able to leave ahead of time weathered the storm inside hallways, bathrooms, and closets. Those who made it were left to pick up pieces of their lives from rubble that was stacked 10 feet deep in some places. For the

12/16/2021

At least 74 people were killed in Kentucky, with over 100 still unaccounted for, when a storm system smashed through five states over the weekend. I spent two long days in Dawson Springs, where a tornado the likes of which have never been seen wreaked utter havoc on a neighborhood comprised of small cottages, mobile homes, and apartment buildings. I’ve covered many natural disasters and have never seen anything like the damage this storm caused.

I’m coming out of a social media hibernation (which has been amazing) to share some of the scenes I witnessed this week. I’m often troubled by how quickly media moves on from events like this that take place in quieter corners of the country… and have to trust that sharing work like this can play a small part in keeping people talking, keep them focused, maybe indirectly help the situation somehow. Thanks for looking.

Much thanks to , , , & the team for the support this week and for working hard to get our coverage out into the world. If you feel inclined, please donate — money, supplies, your time — it’s all very much needed right now in Western Kentucky.

03/05/2021

6th Ward walk with actor for the current cover of .

Thank you , and thank you (x2) to the team:

02/22/2021

Albert Woodfox on the fifth anniversary of his freedom, for .

Woodfox spent almost 45 years of his life in solitary confinement — believed to be the longest period of anyone in American history. On February 19th, he celebrated his 74th birthday and five years of "physical" freedom because, he says, prison could not confine his mind or his spirit.⁠⁠
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"It never ever came close to breaking my spirit. And that’s what solitary confinement is designed for."⁠⁠
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In 1972, a white correctional officer at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (known as Angola prison) was killed. Woodfox and a fellow Black Panther named Herman Wallace were immediately targeted as suspects, despite a lack of evidence, and convicted of the murder. Together with Robert King, a fellow Black Panther convicted of a separate murder in prison in 1973, the men became known as the Angola Three. All three maintained their innocence for decades.
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Woodfox's powerful memoir "Solitary" was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer prize in 2019. Despite the grave injustice of his wrongful incarceration and the horrors of sustained solitary confinement, Mr. Woodfox emerged an activist whose spirit remains unbroken.

Alicia Maules published a wonderful interview with Mr. Woodfox to mark the anniversary of his release from prison at www.innocenceproject.org. Thank you to and the team at the for the opportunity to contribute to this project.

12/17/2020

"The Real Trees Delivering Fake Corporate Climate Progress” for

GreenTrees, LLC says it’s fighting climate change by reforesting thousands of acres of farmland along the lower Mississippi River. But it's taking credit for other people’s trees.

The company says it pays landowners to convert their croplands to forests, tallies the planet-warming carbon absorbed by those trees, and then sells credit for the carbon reductions to big corporations (including United Airlines, Bank of America, Microsoft, and Royal Dutch Shell) that want to offset their own greenhouse gas emissions. But interviews with 17 participating landowners, as well as an examination of hundreds of pages of contracts and project documents, reveal that GreenTrees usually takes credit for trees that were already planted, or would have been planted anyway. Because GreenTrees’ payments aren’t causing most of the carbon sequestration to happen, the climate benefits claimed by the project are inflated. That means corporations buying offsets from GreenTrees aren’t really cutting their greenhouse gas emissions as much as they contend.

Big thank to for the opportunity to contribute to this reporting project, and for sending me up to the Delta last week!

12/05/2020

Last one from the 2020 Photo Annual awards (now hosted by ), then I’ll be done 📣 for a while.

After three Baptist churches in rural Louisiana were set ablaze within a 10 day period in 2019, sent me to help contextualize the news coverage. I visited the sites of the burned churches, met with church leaders and members of their congregations, and photographed Sunday services held in impromptu locations on the following weekend.

Authorities eventually charged a 22-year-old white man - son of a local sheriff’s deputy - with federal criminal counts including intentional damage to religious property, which is a hate crime.

I only enter work that I’m personally proud of for these annual competitions, and it tends to be the work that was the most challenging to make. So, the acknowledgement is affirming and also truly humbling. I mostly feel grateful for the kindness of people who allow me to photograph with them during difficult times, for editors like who trust and support me through assignments like this one, and for the immense privilege of connecting with life and human experiences through photography. 🔆

12/03/2020

This portrait of Causey Davis is included in the 2020 Photo Annual awards (now hosted by ). I photographed Mr. Davis last year for a investigation into “ghost warrants”.

Davis, 54, has spent time in jail on five different occasions in three states for a single charge — in 2006, he wrote bad checks at a Walmart in Arkansas, where he’d been temporarily relocated after his home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Even though his sentence of probation should have long since expired, Davis has been re-arrested over and over, spending up to several months behind bars each time, only to be released with no further charges. “It just keeps haunting me,” Davis said. Erroneous or outdated criminal charges that linger on a person’s record for years— also known as “sticky warrants”— can result either from prosecutors and probation departments refusing to drop minor cases from the distant past, or from outright clerical errors.

I’m proud to get work like this placed in industry competitions alongside much lighter fare, and incredibly grateful for editors like who trust me to confirm the dignity of people who have endured such unbelievable adversity.

12/02/2020

I’m proud to have three separate entries included in the 2020 Photo Annual awards (now hosted by ). This series on the immigrant workers rebuilding the Florida Panhandle after Hurricane Michael originated with a assignment from editor extraordinaire .chapman.

11/28/2020

Actor Bryan Cranston in the back yard for . Thank you for getting me out of the house!

Cranston has been in New Orleans wrapping up “Your Honor”, a 10-part thriller set amid a tangled web of political, criminal, and racial rivalries (see: New Orleans), premiering Dec. 6 on Showtime.

10/20/2020

Outtakes from the Lake Charles region for . Reporter Rick Rojas filed a great followup story on the region’s trials and troubles that published online this morning:

"Lake Charles, a working-class city of roughly 78,000 people, has been eviscerated by a direct assault from this season’s hurricanes — Laura, one of the most powerful storms to hit Louisiana, followed six weeks later by Delta. Thousands of residents remain displaced. But as many see it, the city was also the victim of an extraordinary year of misfortune, one that has subjected the nation to a carousel of calamity — record storm and wildfire seasons on top of a pandemic. The dire needs of Lake Charles have been all but erased.

The mayor, Nic Hunter, has struggled to shine a spotlight on his city, appearing on CNN, Fox News and NPR, where he told listeners, “I am begging, I am pleading for Americans not to forget about Lake Charles.”

Charitable organizations said that donations have been a small fraction of what they took in after Hurricane Rita hit the region in 2005, and that they have not been able to attract enough volunteers to clear the mountains of debris crowding streets and to clean the muck out of homes flooded by Delta.”

10/13/2020

Hurricane Delta hit Southwestern Louisiana as a CAT 2 hurricane last week. The Lake Charles region had barely started to clean up the detritus of Hurricane Laura, a much larger storm that swept through earlier this fall. This storm reset the timeline for rebuilding back to zero. It’s been such a long year.
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Thank you / / for the support this weekend.

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San Fransisco, CA

Telephone

+14155330536

Website

http://www.widmerphoto.com/

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