Since the beginning of his career, Dawoud Bey has used his camera to depict communities and histories that have largely remained underrepresented or even unseen. This full-scale retrospective highlights the artist’s commitment over the course of his four-decade career to portraying the Black subject and African-American history in a manner that is at once direct and poetic, and immediate and symbolic. The exhibition includes his tender and perceptive early portraits of Harlem residents, large-scale color Polaroids, and a series of collaborative word and image portraits of high school students, among others.
Dawoud Bey: An American Project
Dawoud Bey, "Three Women at a Parade, Harlem, NY, from the series Harlem, U.S.A.," 1978; courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, Stephen Daiter Gallery, and Rena Bransten Gallery;© Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey, "A Boy in Front of the Loew's 125th Street Movie Theater, Harlem, NY, from the series Harlem, U.S.A.," 1976; courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, Stephen Daiter Gallery, and Rena Bransten Gallery;© Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey, "Don Sledge and Moses Austin, Birmingham, AL, from the series The Birmingham Project," 2012; Rennie Collection, Vancouver;© Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey, "Girls, Ornaments, and Vacant Lot, Harlem, NY" (2016)
Dawoud Bey, "A Young Man Resting on an Exercise Bike, Amityville, NY"(1988)
Dawoud Bey, "Alva, New York, NY" (1992)
“It is an honor to be part of The Warhol Foundation’s mission to support the visual arts coupled with its commitment to specifically support the voices of women, POC, Native Americans, and LGBTQ. It is simply thrilling to be part of an organization where we get to see these values writ large and implement real change in real life ways in the visual arts community that still so needs to move forward in terms of social justice, equality, and diversity. We put our money where our mouth is. How many institutions actually do that?”
Deborah Kass, Artist