Photographer’s Decades Worth of Images Document the Diversity of Ordinary Black America
A photographer who has built a career showing his view of the past through black and white photos, his new exhibit spanning his entire career is now crossing the USA. With eight different series included, this exhibit holds over eighty photographs.
Each series depicts a moment in time and begins with Harlem, U.S.A throughout the seventies, progressing through Street Portraits taken in the eighties and nineties, and followed by Class Pictures beginning in 2002, this exhibit shows people in the moments that create a life. His Night Comes Tenderly, Black which includes black and white photos taken at places that are said to be stops along the Underground Railroad show that while many things may be changing there is still a connection to the past that can never be severed. The evolution through the series is not only a passage through his own lifetime but includes moments of hundreds of other lifetimes as well, and depicts life at it’s fullest in each moment.
As he grew as an artist and choose new settings and new focal points, his cameras choices also evolved. Beginning with a 35 mm camera and switching to Polaroid and a 4×5, the tools have changed but the emotion and the stories are often similar throughout the years. Each set of photos shows not only a moment in time, but a period in time where things were still yet changing, each showing that though there are differences and the world adapts there is much that remains the same despite the year on the calendar.
Inspired by the late Roy DeCarava, who found his place in history with his Guggenheim fellowship, Jazz musician John Coltrane, and his own life experiences growing up, each photograph speaks to a deeper understanding of people. Many of his series are formed around locations that he lived, that he spent time with family and friends, and show a story of those who are in them. Many remain uncaptioned or untitled to allow the viewer to form their own interpretation of each, though in Class Pictures he requested each student supply a short statement, a few lines of text to share something about themselves.
Dawoud was born in Queens in 1953 and has found inspiration in the city that he grew up in and the people who filled it. His original inspiration was formed as he learned his family history in the community that he was raised in and the connections to the friends and family that were held there. This exhibit that begins in Harlem in 1975 spans forty years and includes several communities around New York. Each series, and each photograph, show the connection between the past and the present, as well as the future. While exemplified in a photo that displays just one moment, each encompasses years of history.
The exhibition, Dawoud Bey: An American Project, is on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City until Oct 3, 2021.
