Dawoud bey
Dawoud Bey is an American photographer and educator best known for his large-scale photographs and street photography. He has spent over four decades creating engaging, challenging, and insightful photos that depict Black American lives with respect and subtlety.
He crafts emotional reflections on transparency, power, and race. He documents cultures and experiences that have historically gone unnoticed or overlooked, and his work adds tremendous gravity to a continuing dispute concerning what it means to portray America through a lens.
On the right: Martina and Rhonda, Chicago, IL, 1993
Bey has dabbled with a variety of advanced techniques and photography traditions. he has done a variety of collaborative initiatives since 1992, collaborating with youth, museums, and cultural organizations to increase the engagement of many populations whose voices have often been silenced in these institutions.
On the left: Kevin, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA ,2005
dawoud Bey, who was born David Edward Smikle in Queens, New York, in 1953, has been a resident of Chicago since 1998. For several years, Bey has linked his artistic beginnings back to 1968, when his godmother gifted him his first camera at 15. Soon, he grew fascinated with learning how to utilize it.
He purchased photography magazines and his parents allowed him to convert the family kitchen into a darkroom by concealing the window with black cloth. From 1977 to 1978, he attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and he obtained his BA in Photography from Empire State College in 1990 and his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1993. In the mid-1970s, while still living in Queens, he attended his first photography course at a local Y.M.C.A. and began capturing Harlem. Bey is now a photography lecturer at Columbia College, an art and design school.
he was motivated to change his name to Dawoud Bey by renowned artists of the period, such as poet Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones, who were reclaiming African names as a kind of agency.
Whichever approach he employs, he utilizes his artwork to challenge stereotyped portrayals of Black Americans and other historically underprivileged groups.
On the right: A Couple in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY, 1990
Bey was awarded a MacArthur Fellow in 2017 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and is considered one of the most original and impactful photographers of his time.
On the left: Mary Parker and Caela Cowan, 2012
"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."
On the right: A Girl with School Medals, Brooklyn, NY, 1988
Above: Combing Hair, Syracuse, NY, 1986