David Driskell's patronage of young photographer and former student William McNeil is a testament to his dedication to the support of emerging artists. William McNeil believes that he is at a stage of development where he is trying to become conscious of what he has within himself and to express those discoveries within his art. His 1993 photograph Elegy represents part of this extremely personal journey. Elegy, McNeil's visual testament of sorrow, was created in memory of his father.

As part of his series Echoes of Passage, Elegy represents a stylistic shift in McNeil's work from primarily representational photographs to images of nonobjective subjects.  T. F.