Ava Williams: The Twins
June 17th, 2020
Full of touchingly small and yet intimate moments, Ava Williams’ series The Twins brings the viewer into the close and complex relationship between the photographer and her identical twin. Public Offerings Ltd. caught up with Ava to talk inspiration and how, in struggling to find her own identity, she has created a series that can help you explore yours.
POL: First off, what drew you to photography as an art from?
AW: I wish I could say I was drawn to photography for a singular reason. But, for me, there were a lot of factors that caused me to gravitate towards it. Sometimes small things, that to some may mean nothing, actually mean everything.
One of the biggest factors though, was my maternal grandmother who was constantly taking pictures of our family and especially my sister and me. I was used to seeing prints, negatives, and not posing but being candid - paying no attention to a camera. Currently, I tend to be the one training people, friends, and family to pay no attention to my camera. Even though all these things were around me for my whole life, I was only 16 when I actually decided that I would pursue it. Looking back, that's crazy because I knew very little about it. I had only just completed a single darkroom photography class and had completely switched life plans. It’s the most spontaneous I’ve ever been, and probably ever will be.
POL: Your work is obviously very personal, how do you find such emotional frankness through your photography?
AW: It is easy for me to be honest in photography because I am a very closed off person. My life has always been about showing just enough of myself to people so that they don’t ask me any more questions. I know what people need to get by. I am in a constant state of categorising my life into things to say and things not to say.
So, when making The Twins, I knew which moments matter the most. I know which moments are rare, which moments need to be documented. Of course, I need help on some occasions deciphering what is “twinhood”, “sisterhood”, or just “life”, but for the most part, I have a good grasp on what needs to be said. With The Twins, I’m telling the audience the story of my life. It’s hard not to get emotional and frank with the world. I am looking the audience in the eye and telling them this is how you make me feel. This is how Chloe makes me feel. I spill my feelings about my whole life out for the world to view. I'd be a bad storyteller if it weren’t honest and emotional.
POL: Your series The Twins really draws on your relationship with your twin sister, Chloe, what drew you to sharing this relationship? Have you learnt anything about your relationship through working on the project together?
AW: Originally I wasn’t keen on doing The Twins. As a private person, it meant opening up to strangers the most intimate relationship I have. I wasn’t sure I should do it, but, in reality, I was just scared. I made excuses. I felt too boring and at the same time the project felt too narcissistic. It’s hard to have your life and feelings critiqued, but there is beauty in explaining why you are the way you are.
What really made me push forward was my professor, Jessica Wynne, at FIT [Fashion Institute of Technology, NY]. After seeing an environmental portrait of Chloe I took for her class when I was 19, she was really persistent on me doing the project. I owe it all to her really. She made me feel like I was doing something more than just existing. She made me feel like I had something to say and that what I was saying was important - something which I hadn’t felt with my opinions, art, or work ever before. All my fears were proven wrong thanks to her.
As for Chloe and me, we learned a lot about each other because our relationship had felt so normal. As though we were nothing more than sisters, when in reality we’re like a married couple. It is hard to make images as we both have some crazy schedules, and Chloe is in school, but when we make something, even if there are times when we bicker, it’s those moments and getting those shots I will always remember. In looking back on our lives for the sake of photos, both of us became aware just how intertwined we are.
POL: In The Twins the images feel natural and real, how do you plan your images? The personal snap-shot style of some of them is almost as though looking through a family photo album, is it difficult to construct images without creating overtly staged moments?
AW: The moments are based on real-life, so, as much as they are staged, they are moments that are just a bit more refined. The more conceptual images are made by incorporating the concept I’m trying to portray into our real-life surroundings like our apartment, childhood home, and cars. I get an idea and I just drop it into our everyday life and refine it from there.
It isn’t hard for me to do this because I am often weaving the idea of documentation, staging, and conceptual forms in and out of photos. I want it to look like a photo album and, to me, merging these ideas creates balance.
To plan I just observe our relationship constantly. When I notice people staring at us, because we are identical or when I do something with Chloe that’s special, I write it down or draw it as I see it. Later, I analyse the situation closer. Is it twinhood? Or is it life? Is it both? I question what it says about us and what it says about other people which makes it easy to get the message across.
I’m naturally a deadpan photographer. I simplify everything and I visualise everything, even the curves layer I will put on the photo in Photoshop. It may sound crazy or controlling but I can’t help it. My planning is extensive so the photograph can be easy and effective. Not to say it isn’t hard, but it has to look easy. I want to make sure that people don’t spend too much time, when they first glance at my work, wondering about trivial things like lighting. For me, although lighting is a huge part of photography, I'm not trying to emphasise that skill. I’m trying to convey a feeling. I want people to focus on that.
POL: Do you have a particular favourite images from the project?
AW: My favourite at the moment is the image of Chloe holding the mirror in our living room while I look at the camera. It creates a half and half of each of us. The photo is about Chloe and I being half of each other, forever stuck questioning our identity. Forever regarded as half a person because we have “another half” that looks just like us. Never truly being a whole person because subconsciously to everyone there is something missing when my sister and I are not together. We know we have a life long journey, searching for our own identity and questioning if we truly have our own identities beyond being one of “the twins”.
Sharing this image and the meaning behind it with others, I was originally shocked by how many people understood it personally. Struggling with who you are is a journey a lot of people have to take. Having an image speak beyond myself and hearing people’s own struggles with identity gives me insight into the life of someone I would have never known. It’s a gift, and the highest privilege to tell my story and hear someone else’s in return.
POL: Do you have any photography or art hero’s who have informed your aesthetic?
AW: I have a lot, Linda McCartney in particular was a huge inspiration for me because of her family documentation. Ariko Inaoka did a beautiful project on a set of twins titled Eagle and Raven. Others include William Klein, Gordon Parks, Alex Prager, and Tim Walker. Most of their aesthetics are nothing like mine, but I am constantly inspired by them. Sometimes it’s more about the emotion I get from their images. As strange and different as they may be, I somehow am always drawing lines from their work to the smallest of similarities in my own.
“Chloe never volunteered to be a part of this project she simply was. This project is a collaboration. Chloe is a co-founder of the relationship I am trying to describe.
What started this project was a desperate attempt to answer the age old question “what’s it like to be a twin?”. But it did not actually answer any questions at all and has not answered any questions, and I don’t think it ever really will. Despite this, I am constantly writing down memories, struggles, and ideas to figure out what things mean and I think, in the end, the lines I draw mean nothing and everything to this project.”
Ava Williams on The Twins
POL: You’re still incredibly young, where do you want to see your photography take you in the next few years?
AW: I like every bit of photography, I love working, I love doing everything photography related. I like it all. So to say I want to do it all wouldn’t be a stretch. Not to sound too naive in that statement or too eager, but I feel so privileged to be in a field I love wholeheartedly.
In the next few years, I’d love to find my footing. I know it takes time to really get there, but I’m willing to wait and work towards that. Take more pictures of people I don’t know and learn more about them, while having a voice in the photographic community, would be wonderful instead of floating on the outside.
I’m working my way in. I’ve been doing a lot of fashion, documentary, and portrait photography while freelance retouching and have been loving it. If that’s what I am doing in the next few years, I’ll still love it.
POL: What are you working on right now? What’s next?
AW: The Twins is life long, but I’ve been working out logistics of making it a book. I also just finished a project titled I Hate Being 22, which was my way of coping with adulthood.
I’m now working on a project where I take portraits of people I know, just when I run into them unexpectedly in the world. I have an obsession with how small the world really is and the paths which cross.
What’s next for me is vague, it’s everything and anything.
About Ava Williams
Ava Williams is a Brooklyn based photographer that likes big sunglasses, small cameras, and medium lattes.
Ava took her BFA in photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY. She was the recipient of both the Wolfe Scholarship (2017) and The Gordon Parks Foundation Scholarship (2018). Her work has been exhibited at Salon de la Photo, alongside exhibitions at FIT.
Ava’s work has also been published in Sugar Magazine, the PDN Emerging Photographer Magazine, Iso Magazine and The New York Times.