On Saturday December 5, 2020, at 3 pm, Hennessey + Ingalls Art and Architecture Bookstore hosts photographer Janna Ireland and preservationist Cindy Olnick as they discuss architect Paul R. Williams.

In her just-released book of photographs, Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View (Angel City Press, 2020), fine-art photographer Janna Ireland explores the work of the first AIA-certified Black architect west of the Mississippi River. Ireland captures Williams’ brilliance in a series of intimate black-and-white photographs, giving the reader a vision of his work that is both universal and highly personal. More than a book of architectural photographs, Regarding Paul R. Williams is the result of one artist’s encounter with another, connecting across different generations within the same city.

Known as “The Architect to the Stars,” Paul Revere Williams was a Los Angeles native who built a wildly successful career as an architect decades before the Civil Rights Movement. He designed municipal buildings and private homes as well as banks, churches, hospitals, and university halls. He designed public housing projects and, at the opposite extreme, mansions for celebrities such as Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball. In 1923, Williams became the first Black person to be named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. In 2017, nearly forty years after his death, he became the first Black recipient of the AIA Gold Medal.

Any fan of American architecture and/or fine-art photography will be captivated by Regarding Paul R. Williams with its mesmerizing photographs, as well as the discussion generated when Ireland and Olnick consider Paul R. Williams and his impact on the world of architecture and art.

Regarding Paul R. Williams has been shortlisted in the competition for best first photography book of 2020 for the internationally sought-after Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards.

Janna Ireland was born in Philadelphia, but has chosen Los Angeles as her home. She holds an MFA from the UCLA Department of Art and a BFA from the Department of Photography and Imaging at NYU. Ireland is the 2013 recipient of the Snider Prize, presented by the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago. Her fine-art photography is part of the permanent collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), California African American Museum, and Woodbury School of Architecture, all in Los Angeles; and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Her work also has been shown in solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Chicago, and in group exhibitions across the United States and internationally. Her photographs have been published in Aperture, Harper’s, Art Papers, Vice, and in the Los Angeles Times.

Cindy Olnick is a communications consultant for historic places and preservation. She led communications for the Los Angeles Conservancy from 2004 to 2018, overseeing messaging, strategy, engagement, branding, marketing, digital outreach, and media relations. In her private practice, Cindy helps people to advance the field of preservation through strategic communications. She co-hosts Save As, a podcast showcasing the work of graduate students in the University of Southern California’s Heritage Conservation Program. Cindy serves on the boards of Long Beach Heritage and of Photo Friends of the Los Angeles Public Library, for whom she wrote L.A. Landmarks: Lost and Almost Lost (2017). She has worked on several Angel City Press books, including An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles, by David Gebhard, Robert Winter, and Robert Inman.

Hennessey + Ingalls Art and Architecture Bookstore has grown to fill a unique niche in American retailing. It is the largest art, architecture, and design bookstore in the western United States, and is one of the largest retail operations in the country dealing solely with books on the visual arts. Founded in 1963 by Reginald Hennessey as an outlet for rare and out-of-print architecture books, it remains family-owned and managed by his son, Mark Hennessey.

Regarding Paul R. Williams: Janna Ireland and Cindy Olnick in conversation at Hennessey+Ingalls