Dawoud Bey
Encyclopedia
Dawoud Bey is an American
photographer renowned for his large-scale color portraits of adolescents and other often marginalized subjects.
Born David Edward Smikle in New York City
's Jamaica, Queens
neighborhood, he changed his name to Dawoud Bey in the early 1970s. He studied at the School of Visual Arts
in New York from 1977–78, graduated with a BFA
in Photography
from Empire State College
in 1990, and received his MFA from Yale University School of Art
in 1993. Over the course of his career, Bey has participated in more than 20 artist residencies
, which has allowed him to work directly with the adolescent subjects of his most recent work.
A product of the 1960s, Dawoud Bey said both he and his work are products of the attitude, “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” This philosophy significantly influenced his artistic practice and resulted in a way of working that is both community-focused and collaborative in nature. Bey’s earliest photographs, in the style of street photography
, evolved into a five-year project documenting the everyday life and people of Harlem
in Harlem USA (1975–1979).
Of his work with teenagers Bey has said, “My interest in young people has to do with the fact that they are the arbiters of style in the community; their appearance speaks most strongly of how a community of people defines themselves at a particular historical moment.” During a residency at the Addison Gallery of American Art
in 1992, Bey began photographing students from a variety of high schools both public and private, in an effort to “reach across lines of presumed differences” among the students and communities. This new direction in his work guided Bey for the next fifteen years, including two additional residencies at the Addison, an ample number of similar projects across the country, and culminated in a major 2007 exhibition and publication of portraits of teenagers organized by Aperture
and entitled Class Pictures. Alongside each of the photographs in Class Pictures, is a personal statement written by each subject. This rich combination of image and text expands the notion of the photographic portrait, and further creates portraits that are each incredibly powerful in its amalgamation, at times surprising, disturbing, and heart-wrenching.
Currently living in Chicago
, Illinois
Bey teaches at Columbia College Chicago
, and is represented by Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston
, Massachusetts
, and Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago.
in 2002. He has exhibited in a number of solo and group shows including Dawoud Bey: Portraits 1975-1995 at the Walker Art Center
in 1995, Dawoud Bey at the Queens Museum of Art
in 1998, Dawoud Bey: The Chicago Project at the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art
in 2003, Dawoud Bey: Detroit Portraits at the Detroit Institute of Arts
in 2004, and Class Pictures, organized by the Aperture Foundation
and on view initially at the Addison Gallery of American Art
in 2007, and then touring to museums throughout the country for four years, including the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Milwaukee Art Museum among others.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
photographer renowned for his large-scale color portraits of adolescents and other often marginalized subjects.
Born David Edward Smikle in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's Jamaica, Queens
Jamaica, Queens
Jamaica is a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York, United States. It was settled under Dutch rule in 1656 in New Netherland as Rustdorp. Under British rule, the Village of Jamaica became the center of the "Town of Jamaica"...
neighborhood, he changed his name to Dawoud Bey in the early 1970s. He studied at the School of Visual Arts
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...
in New York from 1977–78, graduated with a BFA
Bachelor of Fine Arts
In the United States and Canada, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the visual or performing arts. In some countries such a degree is called a Bachelor of Creative Arts or BCA...
in Photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
from Empire State College
Empire State College
Empire State College, one of the thirteen arts and science colleges of the State University of New York, is a multi-site institution offering associate, bachelor's, and master's degrees. It is primarily oriented towards the adult learner...
in 1990, and received his MFA from Yale University School of Art
Yale School of Art
The Yale School of Art is one of twelve constituent schools of Yale University. It is a professional art school, granting only Masters of Fine Arts degrees to those completing studies in graphic design, painting/printmaking, photography, or sculpture....
in 1993. Over the course of his career, Bey has participated in more than 20 artist residencies
Artist in residence
Artist-in-residence programs and other residency opportunities allow visiting artists to stay and work so that they may apply singular focus to their art practice....
, which has allowed him to work directly with the adolescent subjects of his most recent work.
A product of the 1960s, Dawoud Bey said both he and his work are products of the attitude, “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” This philosophy significantly influenced his artistic practice and resulted in a way of working that is both community-focused and collaborative in nature. Bey’s earliest photographs, in the style of street photography
Street photography
Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions and other settings....
, evolved into a five-year project documenting the everyday life and people of Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
in Harlem USA (1975–1979).
Of his work with teenagers Bey has said, “My interest in young people has to do with the fact that they are the arbiters of style in the community; their appearance speaks most strongly of how a community of people defines themselves at a particular historical moment.” During a residency at the Addison Gallery of American Art
Addison Gallery of American Art
The Addison Gallery of American Art, as a department of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art...
in 1992, Bey began photographing students from a variety of high schools both public and private, in an effort to “reach across lines of presumed differences” among the students and communities. This new direction in his work guided Bey for the next fifteen years, including two additional residencies at the Addison, an ample number of similar projects across the country, and culminated in a major 2007 exhibition and publication of portraits of teenagers organized by Aperture
Aperture Foundation
The Aperture Foundation was founded in 1952 by Ansel Adams, Minor White, Barbara Morgan, Dorothea Lange, Nancy Newhall, Beaumont Newhall, Ernest Louie, Melton Ferris, and Dody Warren. Their vision was to create a forum for fine art photography, a new concept at the time. The first issue of...
and entitled Class Pictures. Alongside each of the photographs in Class Pictures, is a personal statement written by each subject. This rich combination of image and text expands the notion of the photographic portrait, and further creates portraits that are each incredibly powerful in its amalgamation, at times surprising, disturbing, and heart-wrenching.
Currently living in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
Bey teaches at Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago is one of the largest art colleges in the United States with nearly 12,000 students pursuing degrees within 120 undergraduate and graduate programs...
, and is represented by Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, and Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago.
Intent of work
Bey has clearly stated that he has specific social intentions with his work. In an interview conducted by Maureen Post of OnMilwaulkee.com, Dawoud Bey reveals some of these with his project Class Pictures. His responses shed light on how, in his opinion, photography can capture peoples’ true essences and identities by changing social stereotypes. Bey has always lived by the saying “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” When asked about this, he replied that the intention of his work is to create change in the spirit of the protesters of the 1960s and 70s. He says, “I always wanted my photographs to challenge the status quo, to contest the kinds of images that existed in popular culture, that staked out my own sense of who and what the subject matter was and why they're important.” Specifically in reference to Class Pictures, Bey wanted to change society’s general view of modern American youth. He later explains how he manages to do this using photographic portraits: “Photographs are everywhere and photography has an immediacy and familiarity that no other medium does. This is both photography's blessing and its curse. Its very familiarity keeps people from engaging with it critically even as they consume photographs almost effortlessly. Because it is a broadly accessible medium I think it has the ability to viscerally describe the experience of one human being to another.” He describes how photography has the ability to surpass cultural stereotypes. Since photography is so universal, in its true form, it surpasses any cultural boundaries or stereotypes that society might place on a person outside of the photograph.Awards and exhibitions
Bey was the recipient of an artist fellowship at Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), New York in 1983, an artist fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1986, a regional fellowship form the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in 2002. He has exhibited in a number of solo and group shows including Dawoud Bey: Portraits 1975-1995 at the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
in 1995, Dawoud Bey at the Queens Museum of Art
Queens Museum of Art
The Queens Museum of Art is an art museum and educational center located in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in the borough of Queens in New York City, United States.-Overview:...
in 1998, Dawoud Bey: The Chicago Project at the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art
Smart Museum of Art
The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. The permanent collection of over 10,000 objects includes works by Francisco Goya, Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Diego...
in 2003, Dawoud Bey: Detroit Portraits at the Detroit Institute of Arts
Detroit Institute of Arts
The Detroit Institute of Arts is a renowned art museum in the city of Detroit. In 2003, the DIA ranked as the second largest municipally owned museum in the United States, with an art collection valued at more than one billion dollars...
in 2004, and Class Pictures, organized by the Aperture Foundation
Aperture Foundation
The Aperture Foundation was founded in 1952 by Ansel Adams, Minor White, Barbara Morgan, Dorothea Lange, Nancy Newhall, Beaumont Newhall, Ernest Louie, Melton Ferris, and Dody Warren. Their vision was to create a forum for fine art photography, a new concept at the time. The first issue of...
and on view initially at the Addison Gallery of American Art
Addison Gallery of American Art
The Addison Gallery of American Art, as a department of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art...
in 2007, and then touring to museums throughout the country for four years, including the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Milwaukee Art Museum among others.
Books
- Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey, photography (New York: Aperture, 2007).
- Dawoud Bey: The Chicago Project, (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, 2003).
- Dawoud Bey: Portraits 1975-1995, A.D. Coleman (editor), photography (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1995).
Further reading
- Bey, Dawoud, Jacqueline Terrassa, Stephanie Smith, and Elizabeth Meister. Dawoud Bey: The Chicago Project. Chicago, IL: Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, 2003.
- Braff, Phyllis. “Dawoud Bey: 'The Southampton Project'.” New York Times. April 4, 1999, Arts Section, East Coast Edition
- Coleman, A.D., Jock Reynolds, Kellie Jones, and Dawoud Bey. Dawoud Bey: Portraits 1975-1995. Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 1995
- Cotter, Holland. “Art in Review.” New York Times. Oct 25, 1996, Arts Section, East Coast Edition.
- “Dawoud Bey: Portraits.” Art in America. Vol. 83 no.8 (August 1995): 23.
- Glueck, Grace. “Faces of the Centuries, Famous and Far From It.” New York Times. September 17, 1999, Arts Section, East Coast Edition.
- Johnson, Ken. “Dawoud Bey.” May 10, 2002, p. B35.
- Johnson, Ken. “Enigmatic Portraits of Teen-Agers Free of All Context.” New York Times. August 21, 1998, Arts Section, East Coast Edition.
- Kimmelman, Michael. “In New Jersey, Evolution in Retrospectives.” New York Times. July 18, 1997, Arts Section, East Coast Edition.
- Leffingwell, Edward. “Dawoud Bey at Gorney Bravin + Lee.” Art In America. Vol. 101 no. 10 (November 2002): 154-155
- Lifson, Ben. “Dawoud Bey.” Artforum International. Vol. 35 no. 6 (February 1997): 87.
- Lippard, Lucy. Nueva Luz photographic journal, Volume 1#2 (En Foco, Bronx: 1985)
- Loke, Margaret. “Review: Dawoud Bey.” ARTnews. Vol. 96 no. 2 (February 1997): 118.
- McQuaid, Cate. “Teens in America, pose by pose.” Boston Globe. September 23, 2007, Arts Section.
- Reid, Calvin. “Dawoud Bey at David Beitzel.” Art in America. Vol. 85 no. 4 (April 1997): 113.
- Reid, Calvin. “Dawoud Bey.” Arts Magazine. Vol. 65 no. 1 (Sept. 1990): 76.
- Reynolds, Jock, Taro Nettleton, Carrie Mae Weems, and Dawoud Bey. Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey. New York: Aperture, 2007.
- Sancho, Victoria. “Respect and representation: Dawoud Bey's portraits of individual identity.” Third Text. No. 44 (Autumn 1998): 55-68.
- Schwabsky, Barry. “Redeeming the Humanism in Portraiture.” New York Times. April 20, 1997, Arts Section, East Coast Edition.
- Sengupta, Somini. “Portrait of Young People as Artists.” New York Times. January 18, 1998 Arts Section, East Coast Edition.
- Zdanovics, Olga. “Dawoud Bey.” Art Papers. Vol. 22 no. 3 (May/June 1998): 43-4.