Bill Davis lives and works near Michigan's Great Lakes. Regarded as "one of America's finest photographers" by late curator, critic, and Aeqai editor Daniel Brown, Davis' images are in museum and private collections in the U.S. and abroad.
He has worked on six continents to focus on sustainability and the human conditions that embrace or oppose it. His work meditates on public health and personal wellbeing– informed through the perspective of biography, terrestrial stewardship, and species extinction. Before his M.F.A., Davis relocated from Chicago's Pettersen's Studios to manage Pavel Banka’s Prague studio, assist teaching and coordination for Ohio University's Study Abroad, translate and teach Photo History for Umprum (Usti Nad Labem), and regionally exhibit. Upon return to the U.S., Davis received grants to work in Las Vegas, the Amazon Rain Forest, Machu Picchu, Peru, Paris (Institut d’Etudes Superieures des Arts), Spain (Torre Pujales Fndn.- Costa de Morte Museum of Cont. Art), Korea (Rotary), Vermont (Cone Ed./WMU Technology Grant), Michigan (Kalamazoo Arts Council) and exhibit in Athens, Greece (Siilk), Kiev (Photo Kyiv), Madrid (Ra del Rey), Edinburgh (The Royal Scottish Academy), Australia (Federal Arts Funding Body), UK (University of Leeds), The Cincinnati Art Museum, and Ukraine (Ohio Arts Council/CKSCP/Ukraine Union of Art Photographers) where he presented his work to U.S. Ambassador Pifer. Visit Stanford University's MAHB, Ukraine's VASA Project, and the online Arthur Museum to see his published artwork. He additionally co-chaired the Southwest Michigan Sustainability Summit.
In 2022, Bill Davis was commissioned by LaFONTSEE gallery to photograph Kalamazoo landmarks for corporate collection. He received the 2021 Western Michigan University Climate Change Grant. He was a finalist in the Midwest Center for Photography’s 2020 “Developed Work” International Fellowship Competition, recipient of Marshall University’s Annual Juried Exhibition 1st Place Award 2020, Black and White Magazine’s Honorable Mention, and the Perkins Art Center Juror’s Award. In 2016, he received the WMU Sustainability Project Grant funded by WMU & the Milton Ratner Foundation as Principal Investigator for "Fare Share: Sustainability at Work". In 2017 he was awarded the WMU International Education Faculty Development Fund and Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award to document the use of artificial light to manage culture and its effect on the biosphere. In 2015, he was invited to exhibit at the Hofmobilien Möbelmuseum in Vienna, Austria. As a two-time nominee for the WMU "Excellence in Teaching" award, he was conferred a 2013 individual WMU CFA Fellowship to produce The Autism and Visual Art Project, a study on children and young adults with autism. In 2009 he was awarded a Ragdale Foundation Residency Grant.
His work– in over 75 publications and collected by The Southern Allegheny Museum of Art, The Cincinnati Art Museum, El Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Costa da Morte, and The Ukrainian Museum of Kharkiv School of Photography– intersects with sentience, human impact, and digital culture. Davis lectures on these topics in the Americas, Australia, Asia, and Europe- from Harvard to Karlovo University. His 2019 Foto Kyiv lecture and solo reception followed esteemed lecturer Martin Kiefer, curator of the contemporary art department of the Louvre Museum, Paris.
Davis embraces silver, ink, digital venture, and analog nostalgia- as core requirements for today's lens-based artists.