DAWOUD BEY AT THE WHITNEY
Representing America With A Camera
Since the beginning of his career in the 1970s, Dawoud Bey has used his camera to visualize underrepresented or even unseen communities. Starting with his earliest body of work, Harlem, USA (1975–79), Bey has worked mainly in portraiture, making direct and resonant portrayals of socially marginalized subjects. He is recognized as one of the most innovative and influential photographers of his generation.
An American Project at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City is Bey’s first retrospective in twenty-five years. The exhibition explores the arc of Bey’s career from 1975 to 2017 through nearly eighty works across eight major series. The focus is on the evolution of Bey’s vision as the exhibit examines his portraiture, place, and history. From early portraits in Harlem and classic street photography to multi-panel studio portraits and nocturnal landscapes, the artist has consistently focused his lens on Black individuals.
“The impact of these images lies in the intentionality of Bey’s process,” said Elisabeth Sherman, Whitney Assistant Curator… and his ability to expand the boundaries of the medium while working intimately with his subjects and engaging in American History.”
In a recent interview with Vulture, Bey discusses his current series, which imagines escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad. The large-format landscapes may be beautiful, but as Bey explains Untitled #24 (Lake Erie and Sky 2017), there is a deeper and more purposeful connection. “This was the final destination in America of the underground railroad. It’s 50 miles across Lake Erie to get to Ontario, to get to freedom. Many of the locations of the route are unknown. For my series Night Coming Tenderly, Black,” I wanted to imagine the Black subject without placing them in front of the camera — but rather by placing the viewer in their path. The darkness of these locations made me think of Roy DeCarava, and then Langston Hughes’s poem came to mind, Dream Variations, where he writes: “Night coming tenderly / Black like me.”
Bey’s work revolves around engaging with human subjects and the narrative within their social sphere. “I want to convey a sense of the subjects’ inferiorities, particularly for people—such as black people and young people—whom the larger society does not always consider to have rich and complex inner lives,” said Bey. “I also want to situate those subjects in relation to narratives about the spaces they inhabit, opening a conversation about how those spaces have been represented historically.”
Dawoud Bey: An American Project at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC, through October 3, 2021.
