Tanner K Williams

Tanner K Williams is an award winning Los Angeles-based director and photographer. His work is deeply unapologetic, impossible to forget, and as honest as it is punk. What motivates him most is making work that actually leaves an impact, work that genuinely breaks through and remains poignant among the noise, work that brings you back over and over again—work that doesn’t suck, honestly.

Raised in hyper-orthodox Mormonism, Tanner uses the ironies and oxymorons of his upbringing to motivate genre-bending storytelling with an already unmistakable voice. To him, there is nothing unimportant in a frame or a narrative–no background object, makeup choice or miniscule detail left unconsidered. His work, sometimes with a whisper, other times with a siren, invites the viewer to reconsider how they see the world through a marriage of the incredibly serious and the wholeheartedly un-serious. The work idolizes the banal, pulls at the heartstrings, incites change, baits and switches, challenges the viewer, and makes you cringe and laugh simultaneously. Tanner’s very uninterested by being put in a box. Also, Tanner’s a real sweetheart. 

This past year Tanner’s music video Beat Bunny for Povoa (feat. Madge) won best video at the British Arrows, Gold at the Young Director Awards, a D&AD Pencil, best music video and best performance at the Berlin Music Video Awards, and had Tanner awarded Best New Director at Shots as well as a gold screening at 1.4.

(Photo credit: Clark Goldsberry)

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