"Eye to Eye: Photographs of Local Adelaide Anthropologist Francis Edgar Williams"
2001-04-10 until 2001-04-29
South Australian Museum
Adelaide, SA, AU Australia

This exhibition pays tribute to the lifetime work of Williams, a local Adelaide talent, who graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1914. Later he served in World War I and then moved to Papua in 1922 spending the next twenty years as a Government Anthropologist where he was responsible for collecting detailed information on the many Papuan cultures he encountered. Of the twenty years that Francis Williams lived in Papua, five years was spent living in Papuan villages. He developed a deep respect and affection for the people and their traditional culture as he delved deeper into daily village activities.

His unique relationship with the people of Papua is illustrated in drawings of the objects that interested him and the hundreds of photographs which form the basis of this exhibition. Williams' once said about his photographs, I go down to get photographs...the people dance and chant...I chase about trying to get a photograph.

This exhibition is a unique record of people, a place and a time reflecting the fine qualities of Papuan culture. Francis Williams portrait of the country was a deeply-felt memorial to the place and its peoples.

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