Photograph and words by GREG WILLIAMS

Greg Williams takes pause to consider the bigger picture on images seen small on his social media. This issue: The Best Actor winners at the 96th Academy Awards ceremony.

I was shooting stage-side at the Academy Awards and Cillian Murphy had just won Best Actor for Oppenheimer – and he’d been awarded by former winners of the category Nic Cage, Matthew McConaughey, Sir Ben Kingsley, Brendan Fraser and Forest Whitaker. They had come off stage together and, soon after, the show moved onto the Best Director category, which Christopher Nolan was nominated in. Cillian had first come over to see who was winning Best Director, and then all the other actors lined up alongside him to observe the announcement from the wings. It wasn’t set up in any way, this was just how they landed. It’s one of those very rare circumstances where everything is just given to you – you’ve just got to put yourself in the right place. There was nothing set up about it; it’s absolutely an observed picture and I’m in no way participating in it. I love it because they’re almost standing like Academy Awards in this very straight up position, their hands clasped in front of them, unconsciously uniform. It was one of the big pics I got of the night and I think really speaks to the reverence that is reserved for winning an Oscar.

Leica Q3 1/125 sec, f/5.6, 3200 ISO, 28mm