Wilfred George Randall
About the Artist

Wilfred George Randall, son of Joyce Higgins Randall and grandson of Myrtle B. Higgins was born July 17, 1941 and was raised in the Silver Lake District of Kingston, Massachusetts and Ithaca, New York.

Both of Wilfred's grandfathers had strong artistic histories. John Higgins (of Kingston), was a professional photographer who shot thousands of glass plate and large format negatives in and around South Eastern Massachusetts. Dr. George Swarzenski served as curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.

Wilfred has had a life long association with the First Parish in Kingston. After graduation from Ithaca High School in 1959, Wilfred began a 12 year career as a photo journalist and free lance photographer. In the early 1960s he made two photo expeditions into the deep south and America's Heartland to cover the civil rights movement lead by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Among the pictures displayed in this Web collection are rare photos of Rev. King, unpublished prints of the history making march from Birmingham to Montgomery, Alabama along with the "Cleveland Riot" and a KKK meeting in Ohio.

Wilfred has won numerous national and regional awards for photographic excellence. He worked briefly as a photographer for the Silver Lake News.

As a photographer and a person, Wilfred cared as much for the people he photographed as the stories he covered. He says of his photos, "I would try to capture a long story in a single image and let the natural tension and truth show through."

Wilfred's photos are frozen moments in a tide of change. They are images of a nation and a people in transition.

-- Dennis Randall