Dawoud Bey facts for kids

Dawoud Bey (born David Edward Smikle; November 25, 1953) is an American photographer, artist, and teacher. He is famous for his large-scale art photography and street photography portraits. His work often shows American teenagers and people who are sometimes overlooked in society. In 2017, he received a special award called the MacArthur Fellowship. Many people see him as one of the most creative and important photographers of his time.

Dawoud Bey is a professor at Columbia College Chicago. He is known for taking pictures of Black people in their daily lives. This helped bring Black experiences into the world of fine art, even before it was widely accepted.

Early Life and School

Dawoud Bey was born David Edward Smikle in Jamaica, Queens, New York City. He changed his name to Dawoud Bey in the early 1970s. 'Dawoud' is an Arabic name for David. 'Bey' honors James Hawthorne Bey, a jazz drummer who taught him African drumming.

He went to Benjamin N. Cardozo High School. Later, he studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He earned his first college degree, a BFA in Photography, from Empire State College in 1990. He then got his advanced degree, a MFA, from Yale University School of Art in 1993.

Dawoud Bey didn't get his first camera until he was 15 years old. Before that, he wanted to be a musician. He was inspired by musicians like John Coltrane. Early photographers who inspired him included James Van Der Zee and Roy Decarava. When he was young, Bey was also part of the Black Panthers Party.

His Photography Work

Dawoud Bey does not see his work as traditional documentary photography. He sometimes poses his subjects, suggests how they should stand, or gives them things to hold. Throughout his career, Bey has worked as an artist-in-residence many times. This means he spent time in different communities, working directly with the people he photographed.

Bey grew up in the 1960s, a time of big changes. He believes his work comes from the idea that "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." This idea made him focus on working with communities and collaborating with his subjects.

His first major photo project was Harlem, USA (1975–1979). In this project, he photographed the daily life and people of Harlem. This work was shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. In 2012, the Art Institute of Chicago showed all of the "Harlem, USA" photos together for the first time since that original exhibition. They even added some photos that had never been printed before.

In the 1980s, Bey worked with artist David Hammons. He photographed Hammons's performance art pieces, like Bliz-aard Ball Sale.

Over time, Bey's work became more focused on social and political issues. His photos show a deep understanding and care for the people he photographs.

Photographing Teenagers

Dawoud Bey has said that he is interested in young people because "they are the arbiters of style in the community." This means teenagers often show how a community defines itself at a certain time.

In 1992, during a special project at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Bey started photographing students from different high schools. He wanted to show how students from various backgrounds could connect. This idea guided his work for the next fifteen years. It led to many similar projects across the country.

This work resulted in a big exhibition and book in 2007 called Class Pictures. It featured portraits of teenagers. Next to each photograph in Class Pictures, there was a personal statement written by the teenager. Bey is able to capture "all the complicated feelings of being young" in his photos.

The Birmingham Project

‘The Birmingham Project’ (2012) is a powerful series of photos. It remembers the victims of a terrible bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. This event happened on Sunday, September 15, 1963. The bombing killed four young girls: Addie Collins, Carol Robertson, Cynthia Wesley (all 14), and Denise McNair (10). Sixteen other people were also hurt. After the bombing, two African American boys, James Johnny Robinson (16) and Virgil Ware (13), were also killed in racially motivated attacks.

In this project, each photograph shows two portraits of people from Birmingham. One portrait is of a person the same age as the victims when they died. The other is of an adult who is the age the victim would be if they had lived. These pairs of photos are called diptychs. The project also includes a video called ‘9.15.63’. This video shows a car ride to the church from a child's point of view. It shows places important to the Black community in Birmingham during the Civil Rights era.

Night Coming Tenderly, Black

‘Night Coming Tenderly, Black’ (2017) is a series of 25 photographs. It imagines what the last part of the journey on the ‘Underground Railroad’ might have been like. The idea for this project came from Roy DeCarava’s dark photography. The title of the exhibition was inspired by a line from a poem called ‘Dream Variations’ by Langston Hughes.

The ‘Underground Railroad’ was not a real train system. It was a secret network of routes, safe houses, and people who helped enslaved people escape from southern states to northern states and Canada. This happened until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. It was called the ‘Underground Railroad’ because its operations were secret and happened at night. Also, railroad terms were used as secret code words.

Bey explains that he wanted to "recreate the spatial and sensory experiences of those moving furtively through the darkness." These landscape photos were actually taken during the day. But they were printed in very dark black and gray tones. This makes details appear slowly, like in the dark. He says these dark tones are "a metaphor for an enveloping physical darkness." This darkness was a protective cover for the escaping African American slaves on their journey to freedom.

Recent Work

‘Dawoud Bey: 2 American projects’ is a book published in 2020. It combines two of Dawoud Bey’s projects: ‘The Birmingham Project’ and ‘Night Coming Tenderly, Black’. This book was part of a larger exhibition called ‘An American Project’'’. This exhibition showed many of Bey’s works in 2020 at the SFMOMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Throughout his career, Bey has been known for his community-focused work. He believes his photography "is an ethical practice requiring collaboration with his subjects." Recently, his work has focused on showing the history of Black communities through pictures of their lives today.

The photos in ‘Dawoud Bey: Two American Projects’ are different from Bey’s earlier color photography. The black and white images in ‘The Birmingham Project’ and ‘Night Coming Tenderly, Black’ focus on "historical events and collective memory." They tell a connected story of "past and present, landscapes and portraits, slavery and terrorism."

Dawoud Bey has lived in Chicago, Illinois, since 1998. He is a professor of art at Columbia College Chicago.

Awards and Recognition

Dawoud Bey has received many important awards for his photography:

• 1983: Artist fellowship at Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), New York
• 1986: Artist fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts
• 1991: Regional fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts
• 2002: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
• 2017: MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
• 2019: Art Award, Infinity Awards, International Center of Photography, New York
• 2021: Induction into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum

Exhibitions

Bey's photographs have been shown in many solo and group exhibitions. Some of these include:

• 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.
• Class Pictures, which started at the Addison Gallery of American Art in 2007. This exhibition then traveled to museums across the country for four years.

His work "The Birmingham Project" remembers the six young African Americans killed in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963. This exhibition first opened at the Birmingham Museum of Art in September 2013, exactly fifty years after the event. It also opened at George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film in 2016.

In early 2019, the Art Institute of Chicago hosted "Dawoud Bey: Night Coming Tenderly, Black." This show featured twenty-five black and white photographs taken along the Underground Railroad in Ohio. In 2022, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston also showed ten of these photographs.

A large exhibition of his work, called "An American Project," was put together by the Whitney Museum and SFMOMA. It traveled to San Francisco, the High Museum in Atlanta, and New York City between 2019 and 2021.

From November 18, 2023, to February 25, 2024, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) hosted "Dawoud Bey: Elegy." This exhibition included film installations and a group of photo series.

Collections

Dawoud Bey's photographs are part of many permanent art collections around the world. Some of these include:

• Pérez Art Museum Miami
• Art Institute of Chicago
• Cleveland Museum of Art
• Brooklyn Museum
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Whitney Museum
• J. Paul Getty Museum
• Museum of Contemporary Photography
• Tate Modern
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Studio Museum in Harlem
• Solomon R. Guggenheim