Dawoud Bey facts for kids

Dawoud Bey (born David Edward Smikle; November 25, 1953) is a famous American photographer, artist, and teacher. He is known for his large and powerful portrait photos. Many of his pictures show American teenagers and people who are often overlooked in their communities. In 2017, he received a special award called the MacArthur Fellowship. People see him as one of the most creative and important photographers of his time.

Bey is a professor at Columbia College Chicago. He has helped bring attention to Black people in fine art through his photos of everyday life.

Early Life and Learning

Dawoud Bey was born David Edward Smikle in Jamaica, Queens, New York City. He changed his name to Dawoud Bey in the early 1970s. He went to Benjamin N. Cardozo High School.

He 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 were James Van Der Zee and Roy DeCarava.

He later studied photography at Empire State College and earned his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from Yale University School of Art in 1993.

His Photography Work

Dawoud Bey doesn't just take simple documentary photos. He often works closely with the people he photographs. He might ask them to pose or suggest certain actions. He has done many "artist residencies," which means he spends time in different communities to work directly with people there.

Bey believes his art should help solve problems. This idea has made his work very focused on communities and working together.

Early Work: Harlem, USA

His first big project was called Harlem, USA (1975–1979). He took photos of daily life and people in Harlem, New York. This project was shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. These photos helped show the beauty and reality of Black life in Harlem.

Connecting with People

Bey builds strong connections with the people he photographs. His work often has a "political edge," meaning it shows important social issues. He wants his photos to show how much he cares about his subjects.

Teenagers in Focus

Bey has a special interest in young people. He says teenagers show how a community defines itself at a certain time. For about 15 years, he photographed students from different high schools across the country. He wanted to show how young people from different backgrounds are similar and different.

This led to his major exhibition and book called Class Pictures (2007). In this project, each photo of a teenager was shown with a personal statement written by them. This helped capture all the complex feelings of being young, like hope and big expectations.

The Birmingham Project

‘The Birmingham Project’ (2012) is a powerful series of photos. It remembers the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963. This terrible event killed four young girls: Addie Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley (all 14), and Denise McNair (10). Two Black boys were also killed in attacks related to racism after the bombing.

In this project, Bey created pairs of portraits. One photo shows a person who is the same age as the victims were when they died. The other photo shows an adult who is the age the victim would be if they had lived. These photos help us think about the past and how it connects to the present.

Night Coming Tenderly, Black

‘Night Coming Tenderly, Black’ (2017) is a series of 25 dark, moody photographs. It imagines the last part of the journey on the ‘Underground Railroad’. The ‘Underground Railroad’ was not a real train. It was a secret network of routes and safe houses. It helped enslaved African Americans escape from the southern states to freedom in the northern states and Canada before 1863. It was called "underground" because it was secret and "railroad" because they used code words like train terms.

Bey wanted to show what it felt like to travel secretly through the darkness. He took these landscape photos during the day, but he printed them in very dark black and grey tones. This makes details appear slowly, like when your eyes adjust to the dark. He says these dark tones represent the darkness that protected the escaping enslaved people on their journey to freedom.

Dawoud Bey: Two American Projects

In 2020, a book called ‘Dawoud Bey: Two American Projects’ was published. It brings together his ‘The Birmingham Project’ and ‘Night Coming Tenderly, Black’. These projects are different from his earlier color photos because they are in black and white. They focus on history and shared memories, telling a linked story of past and present, slavery and racism.

Dawoud Bey has lived in Chicago, Illinois, since 1998. He continues to teach and create art.

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 work has been shown in many art museums around the world. Some of his important solo shows include:

• Dawoud Bey: Portraits 1975-1995 at the Walker Art Center in 1995.
• Dawoud Bey at the Queens Museum of Art in 1998.
• Class Pictures, which toured many museums across the country for four years, starting at the Addison Gallery of American Art in 2007.
• "The Birmingham Project" opened at the Birmingham Museum of Art in September 2013, exactly fifty years after the bombing.
• "Dawoud Bey: Night Coming Tenderly, Black" was shown at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019.
• A big show called "An American Project" traveled to San Francisco, Atlanta, and New York City from 2019-2021.
• From November 2023 to February 2024, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) hosted "Dawoud Bey: Elegy."

Collections

Dawoud Bey's photographs are part of the permanent collections in many famous museums. This means his work is kept there forever for people to see. Some of these museums 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