Ramón Williams is the inaugural invited artist for the Miami Photographic Observatory (MPhO).
Miami, July 16th, 2025
Ramón Williams is the inaugural invited artist for the Miami Photographic Observatory (MPhO). The Observatory will exhibit a selection of images from his Trace Crop Off series, a unique documentation of the city initiated upon his arrival in 1996. Additionally, Williams has been commissioned to create an alternate documentation using drones to capture Little Havana’s green spaces. His selection highlights the distinctive way he has documented Miami through an unembellished poetic approach that conceptually decodes and recodes the keys to the city’s contradictory nature. Avoiding idyllic natural paradises and seductive stereotypes of luxury and fame commonly associated with Miami, Williams’ incisive lens captures the layers beneath the urban epidermis. Through photographic chronicles of found scenes, Williams employs relentless humor to portray the intervals within the city’s ongoing spectacle, revealing the authentic Miami beneath its façade.
Thus, emerges his incessant wandering to photograph the narratives told by faded walls, stains, and traces. He searches not only on architectural surfaces, but also on expressway pavements and colossal trucks displaying peeling advertisements. In his continuous drift through the city, consistently countering the spectacle, he seeks—as a faithful disciple of Guy Debord and Joseph Kosuth—the precise instant when letters fade and sharp conceptual language games arise.
Williams’ urban mappings originate from strictly documentary findings, yet his chosen framing and compositional sharpness yield photographic series distinguished by abstraction. These images capture gaps, contradictions, the discovery of verbal and visual puns, and the intrusion of alternative meanings within found kitsch. Ultimately, they form photographs that also act as hypertexts connected to Rauschenberg, Rothko, and the broader history of American abstraction.
The traces captured by Ramón Williams—where advertisements peel away, neon lights dim, and walls flake—are serendipitous encounters, chance exercises reminiscent of the unexpected juxtaposition of a “sewing machine and an umbrella,” representing the urban machinery in Miami’s post-party daylight. Consequently, he creates a cohesive body of work imbued with affection for the place in which he lives, yet simultaneously revealing the stark image of a stripped-down city.
