| Summary: | PROOF, a feature-length documentary by Mark Birnbaum, explores the forces that compel Texas photographer Byrd Williams IV to create images of ordinary life that "speak to the unborn." In four hundred to eight hundred years from now, when the millions of digital photos snapped every day around the globe are lost to the ages, Williams' images of silver and gold on paper will show future generations how we lived, dressed, worked and died. Now in his sixties, Williams uses the same equipment and chemistry -- including an archaic view camera -- employed by his great-grandfather, grandfather and father, photographers all, to create unadorned portraits that expand a family archive of over 400,000 prints, negatives, glass plates, cameras, journals and diaries that span two centuries. The collection is housed at the University of North Texas. At its core, the film is a story of a man preoccupied with the legacy of his forebearers -- and his own. In his work, Williams offers a glimpse of the ways his personal experiences, painful family tragedy and obsession with mortality inform the images he makes and the stories they tell.
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