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Photographic Exhbition of the SS United States at Edinburgh's Stills Gallery
Posted: December 6, 2011

The SS United States has come to life in the halls of Edinburgh’s Stills Gallery.

A new exhibition presents a haunting juxtaposition of the Big U’s glamorous past and her faded present. Memorabilia and prints of Kodachrome photographs, commemorating the ship’s heyday, are set in sharp contrast to five large-scale photographs of the SS United States as she is today.

Richard Williams, Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures and Dean of Postgraduate Studies at the University of Edinburgh, is the architect of this exhibit. Although documenting the present of the SS United States fits well with his academic interest in contemporary urbanism, Williams has a deeper and more personal claim to the ship.

Born in the United States, Williams’ parents brought him back to the United Kingdom aboard the SS United States. “It's my creation myth!” Williams says of that trip, and it sparked a lifelong love for and fascination with the ship. In 2010, he had the opportunity to revisit the SS United States. Coming face to face with the icon of his youth, he says, “was an extremely strange experience - seeing something so familiar in image, but for the first time in real life.”

Williams had brought his camera, and the weather, fortunately, obliged. His photographs thoughtfully documented a weary and forlorn SS United States, and formed the backbone of the exhibition. But perhaps more poignant, by contrast, are the prints of old Kodachromes – documenting Williams’ and his parents’ transatlantic trip in 1967.

To our constituency across the Atlantic: Richard Williams’ exhibit at the Stills Gallery will be up through March 18^th, 2012. More information can be found here.

For those of us on this side of the Atlantic: Richard Williams has written an article for the UK's Blueprint Magazine, summarizing his experience with the SS United States and featuring some of his photography, which may be found here.