I am available for select private, institutional and editorial commissions.
Please contact me by
e-mail at:
dawoudbey@aol.com.

Artnet Magazine
Dawoud Bey, Picturing People
by Pedro Velez
May 18, 2012

"Dawoud Bey is Chicago’s holy mountain, a man who towers over the city like no other local artist. You can always find him at openings, speaking at public forums or doing open crits. He is a beloved educator and father figure to many, and if you ask for advice or have a question about some bit of historical minutiae he’ll deliver, which he also does generously on his famous blog What’s Going On. Now Chicago is reciprocating that love with “Dawoud Bey: Picturing People,” May 13-June 24, 2012, a quaint yet outstanding 30-year survey at the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago. The Art Institute of Chicago is also joining the celebration..."

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Art Daily
Art Institute of Chicago Acquires Harlem, U.S.A. Photo Series from Dawoud Bey
May 14, 2012

"The Art Institute of Chicago has recently added the complete set of Harlem, U.S.A.--an iconic series of 25 images by acclaimed photographer Dawoud Bey (American, born 1953)--to its permanent collection. This major acquisition of photographs, almost all in vintage prints, has been made possible by contributions from more than two dozen patrons, including members of the Photography Committee and the Leadership Advisory Committee (LAC). To celebrate the occasion, the Art Institute will present Harlem, U.S.A. in the Modern Wing's Bucksbaum Gallery (G189) from May 2 through September 9, 2012 . This is the first time since its premiere more than 30 years ago that the artist's debut series will be seen in its entirety..."

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Chicago Magazine
A Window into Dawoud Bey's World
by Nina Kokotas Hahn
May 2012

"Back in the 1970s, when he was first starting out, the photographer and Columbia College professor Dawoud Bey spent a lot of time looking: at people on the street, at portraits in museums and galleries, at magazines with pictures by legends like Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. Forty years and numerous grants (including from the Guggenheim and the NEA) later, Bey is enjoying three concurrent exhibitions in Chicago devoted to his work..."

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Chicago Reader - The Bleader
Q&A with Dawoud Bey: Harlem, U.S.A.
by Elly Fishman
May 2, 2012

"Nearly 40 years ago, photographer Dawoud Bey was just beginning his first project in Harlem, New York. Bey, who now teaches at Columbia College, grew up in Queens and spent his high school years playing in garage bands. In 1969, when he was 16, he made his way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the exhibit “Harlem on My Mind”—a visit that marked the beginning of Bey’s photographic inquiry..."

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TIME Magazine LightBox
Harlem Revisited: A New Look at Dawoud Bey's New York Portraits
by Lily Rothman
May 1, 2012

"Present-day Chicago is not Harlem in 1979. Present-day Harlem isn’t even Harlem in 1979. But at the Art Institute of Chicago’s new exhibition Dawoud Bey: Harlem USA, some things have stayed the same. The show comprises the 25 original prints from Bey’s noteworthy 1979 exhibition of the series at the Studio Museum in Harlem, plus five previously unpublished prints from the same era..."

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Time Out Chicago
Dawoud Bey at the Renaissance Society and Art Institute of Chicago
by Lauren Weinberg
April 30, 2012

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Pittsburgh Tribune
Class Pictures Are Telling Portrait of Youth
Kurt Shaw
February 19, 2012

"We all have high-school pictures we look back on with a mix of nostalgia and amusement. But the portraits of students from 17 high schools across the country that photographer Dawoud Bey took between 2003 and 2007 are definitely something a bit more poignant..."

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Dawoud Bey's Class Pictures Exhibit Offers Intense Closeness
by Debra Brehmer
June 13, 2009

"Every teenager, shown close up with a shallow depth of field, becomes an elegant and shifting series of angles, patterns and colors. This landscape of elbows, hand gestures, diagonal lines of the torso and the shining directness and brightness of each young gaze forms dynamic and beautiful images, a distant kin to the great Dutch portraitists who first discovered the hyper-real seduction of oil paint..."

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Time Out Chicago
The Milwaukee Art Museum Offers A summer of "American Originals."
by Lauren Weinberg
June 18-24, 2009

"The large-scale portraits of contemporary teenagers derive their power from strong compositions, Bey’s knack for gaining his subjects’ trust and the autobiographical statement each teen writes. These young men and women display varying degrees of introspection, ambition and optimism...The students’ stories stayed with us long after we left the museum..."

Baltimore City Paper
Class Actions: Looking at Teens Looking at Themselves
by Martin Johnson
January 28, 2009

"In the traveling show Class Pictures, now at the Contemporary Museum, Bey continues this political and personal work with photographs of high school students."

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The Washington Post
His Photos Are Only Part of the Picture,
The Story Behind the Pictures
by Michael O'Sullivan
December 28, 2008

"How much can a portrait reveal -- or conceal -- of what photographer Dawoud Bey calls the subject's "interior self"? That question is at the heart of two related shows at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum and Contemporary Museum."

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Art Daily
Contemporary Museum, Walters Art Museum Offer Dawoud Bey Exhibitions
December 13, 2008

"At the Walters, Portraits Re/Examined: A Dawoud Bey Project will feature contemporary photographs by Bey juxtaposed with historic portraits from the museum’s private collection. Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures, a companion exhibition of more than 40 of Bey’s portraits, will be on view at the Contemporary Museum."

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Baltimore Examiner
Two Dawoud Bey Exhibitions Open This Saturday
by Laura Kuah
December 8, 2008

"Kudos to both the Walters and the Contemporary for finding new and exciting ways to get urban/inner-city young people involved in the city's various museums, rather than simply bringing them in on "educational" field trips."

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Baltimore Sun
A Portrait of Students As Young Walters Curators
by Edward Gunts
December 7, 2008

"Last spring, Juliana Biondo was a high school junior, merely learning about art. But this fall, she has gone from student to teacher. The 17-year-old is one of the first high school students chosen to co-curate an exhibit at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, a portrait show that explores themes of race, class and identity over the centuries.

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Go Triad
August 21, 2008
by Joe Scott
Class Pictures by Dawoud Bey

"Class Pictures" reveals something that Bey says we see too little of in the media: Young Americans in their element, relaxed and sharing part of who they really are."

view full article

The Chicago Tribune
Journeying Beyond Vacation
by Alan G. Artner
August 21st, 2008

“Are we there yet?” is the impatient cry of children engaged in travel. It implies a destination but also shows uncertainty about what that is. It suggests the children know where they’re going only when they arrive, and ultimately that may be less important than the time they spend in passage."

Time Out Chicago
Are We There Yet
by Lauren Weinberg
Issue 180, August 7 - 13, 2008

"As the average price of gasoline in Chicago hovers well above $4 per gallon, Dawoud Bey—who curated “Are We There Yet?”—suggests travel frustrations in the U.S. are giving Americans a taste of the restrictions on movement experienced by most of the world."

New City
At Home in All Places
by Jason Faumberg
August 13, 2008

"Curator Dawoud Bey considered the various perspectives of travel, from the poignant to the leisurely. For some, travel means simply purchasing a ticket. For others, restrictions, documents and planning preclude a first step."

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Hello Beautiful!
Chicago Public Radio
Host, Sam Weller
Broadcast July 27, 2008

Listen to Interview

Sharkforum
Sharkforum Praise: Dawoud Bey
by Mark Staff Brandl
April 15, 2008

"Yes, we can also point out and extol the virtues of artists we admire. One of the greatest treasures Chicago has is the photographer Dawoud Bey."

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Time
Class Pictures

"In an extraordinary new book, photographer Dawoud Bey photographs and talks with American teenagers, creating a diverse group portrait of a generation that defies our expectation."

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Flyp Media
Still LIves
Issue 3 • April 11, 2008

"Teenagers are often limited by social stereotypes. But Photographer Dawoud Bey sees them as misunderstood."

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Newsweek
Here's Looking At You , Kids
by Jennie Yabroff
March 15, 2008

"Artists discover the Documentation Generation. But can we trust what they see?"

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American Photo On Campus
Class Pictures
by Mary Goodwin
March 2008

"A new monograph by Columbia College photo teacher Dawoud Bey penetrates the social veneer of American high school students."

view pdf

Art + Auction
Artinfo: A Talk with Photographer Dawoud Bey
by Julie Brener, Stephanie McBride
February 2, 2008

"Art+Auction commissioned Dawoud Bey to photograph the four art patrons who appear in this month’s feature story on African-American collectors: dealer June Kelly, curator Lowery Stokes Sims and collectors Danny Simmons and Tonya Lewis Lee. Here he chats about the project, his long friendships with all of the subjects save for Lee, whom he was delighted to meet for the first time while on assignment for A+A, and his own art collection."

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Photograph
About The Cover
by Lyle Rexer
January/February 2008

The New Yorker
Goings On About Town: Art
by Vince Aletti
January 28, 2008

"Forty large-scale color portraits of American high-school students, which Bey calls “Class Pictures,” cap two decades of photographing teen-agers and bring him closer to his subjects than ever before." 

Newsweek
The Secret Lives of Teens
Worth Your Time
by Jennie Yabroff
January 26, 2008

The New York Sun
Yearbook Upgrade
by William Meyers
January 17, 2008

"Who, having once survived adolescence, would wish again to be a teenager? Teenagers have attained their adult height and sexual characteristics, but are emotionally and intellectually immature; nowadays their development is further delayed because they are immersed in a popular culture more likely to infantilize them than to help them grow up, and educated in schools where the curriculum is liable to be mush. Into those schools came portrait photographer Dawoud Bey; 40 of his "Class Pictures" are currently on display at the Aperture Gallery."

ArtForum
Reviews: Dawoud Bey, Addison Gallery of American Art
by Francine Koslow Miller
December 2007

Boston Globe
Teens in America, Pose by Pose
by Cate McQuaid
September 23, 2007

"Like his subjects, Dawoud Bey's work compels and frustrates."

NEW YORKER MAGAZINE
Looking Back
by Vince Aletti
May 28, 2007
Critic's Notebook

"If you were interested in the art of photography in the early nineteen-seventies, there were very few places in New York to indulge that passion. The scrappiest, most unpredictable, and least inviting was the Midtown Y Photography Gallery, a stark corridor near the locker rooms in a Y.M.-Y.W.H.A. on East Fourteenth Street that provided hundreds of photographers with a launching pad between 1972 and 1996 (it moved to another equally awkward location for its last three years). An astute exhibition at the New York Public Library, drawn from its holdings of the gallery’s archives, includes early photos by Peter Hujar, Dawoud Bey, Larry Fink, Anthony Barboza, Arlene Gottfried, Ari Marcopoulos, Abelardo Morell, and Michael Spano, but it’s just as sensitive to work by people whose careers fizzled and stalled. By including the washouts along with the breakouts, the show re-creates the gritty, unvarnished texture of a crucial period in photography’s history both as a medium and a market. A wall of pictures taken along the entire length of Fourteenth Street by Sy Rubin in the late seventies and early eighties grounds the show in a neighborhood that’s seen it all."

THE NEW YORK SUN
A Scene that Was Heard
By Willaim Meyers
April 26, 2007

"Only Paris's photographers have invested as much of their art in memorializing their city as New York's photographers have. Although Paris now has several institutions devoted to displaying photographic art, New York has more, and had them earlier. (When it comes to commercial galleries, there is no contest: We beat everybody.) Two of New York's most important institutional venues of photography — one past, one present — meet in the New York Public Library's exhibition Making the Scene: the Midtown Y Photographic Gallery, 1972–1996, which opens tomorrow."

"The show of close to 200 items is housed in the 42nd Street library's stately D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall, with its marble floors, beaux-arts architectural details, and spectacular carved wooden ceiling. The Midtown Y Photographic Gallery wasn't so fancy: It was in the second-floor hallway of the Young Men'sYoung Women's Hebrew Association on 14th Street between First and Second avenues. The building was totally undistinguished architecturally, the walls were a pedestrian pale green, and commercial fluorescent fixtures provided the lighting, but there was a constant thrum of activity. Fliers announced programming for everyone, and there was always lots going on. " (cont.)

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Here Is New York: A Gallery’s Album of 25 Years of City Life
By Martha Schwendener
May 15, 2007

"In the early 1970s, when few art galleries showed photography, the Midtown Y Photography Gallery was a rare pioneer devoted to the medium. An exhibition at the New York Public Library revisits the gallery’s 25-year history and the role it played as photography moved into the art world."

"Making the Scene: The Midtown Y Photography Gallery, 1972-1996 was organized by Stephen C. Pinson, the library’s curator of photography. Its more than 160 photographs track the fortunes of the gallery, which was founded in a corridor of the Emanu-El Midtown Y.M.-Y.W.H.A. by the photographer Larry Siegel, with the help of the financier and philanthropist Robert Menschel." (cont.)

Dawoud Bey began his career as a photographer in 1975 with a series of photographs, “Harlem, USA,” that were later exhibited in his first one- person exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. He has since had numerous exhibitions worldwide, at such institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Barbican Centre in London, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art among many others. The Walker Art Center organized a mid-career survey of his work, “Dawoud Bey: Portraits 1975-1995,” that traveled to institutions throughout the United States and Europe. A major publication of the same title was also published in conjunction with that exhibition. “Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey was published by Aperture in 2007. A traveling exhibition of this work toured to museum throughout the country from 2007 - 2011. In 2008 he completed “Character Project,” commissioned by USA Network and published by Chronicle Books in 2009.

Bey’s works are included in the permanent collections of numerous museums, both in the United States and abroad, including the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and other museums world wide. He has been honored with numerous fellowships over the course of his long career, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2002) and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1991).

His critical writings have appeared in publications throughout Europe and the United States, including High Times Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967- 1975, The Van DerZee Studio , David Hammons: Been There Done That . He has curated a wide range of exhibitions at museums and institutions as well, including the Addison Gallery of American Art, Weatherspoon Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Wadsworth Atheneum, GASP (Gallery Artists Studio Projects) and the Hyde Park Art Center.

His short form essays appear in a regular blog called “What’s Going On?”
www.whatsgoingondawoudbeysblog.blogspot.com

Dawoud Bey holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University School of Art, and is currently Professor of Art and a Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago, where he has taught since 1998.

JASON SMILKE/Mainstream

Portrait Image: High Resolution TIFF | Resume: PDF Format for Download | Brief Bio: PDF Format for Download

"Dawoud Bey: Picturing People"
May 13 - June 26, 2012
Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago
5811 S. Ellis Avenue
Bergman Gallery, Cobb Hall 418
Opening Reception - Sunday, May 13th, from 4 - 7 PM

Since 1975, Chicago-based photographer Dawoud Bey has developed a body of work distinguished for its commitment to portraiture as means for understanding contemporary social circumstances. Ranging from chance street encounters to studio portraits, Bey has investigated a range of methods to find increased engagement with his subjects, and the resulting candor and expression such images convey. The Renaissance Society is pleased to present a career survey of Bey’s work, which will be accompanied by a catalogue including new scholarly essays, and is being slated to travel.

www.renaissancesociety.org

"Dawoud Bey: Harlem, U.S.A"
May 2nd - September 9, 2012
Art Institute of Chicago
Gallery 189

Thanks to the efforts of more than 20 patrons the complete vintage set of Harlem, U.S.A. prints has been acquired by the Art Institute. A further five photographs from that time, never before printed or exhibited, will be donated by Bey to the museum this fall. Complementing this exhibition are a selection of permanent collection works in Gallery 10 curated by Bey as well as a career survey of Bey’s work presented at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago from May 13 through June 26.

Dawoud Bey, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, 
and Matthew Witkovsky in Conversation
May 2nd, from 6 - 8 PM
Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall

6:00 p.m.  Conversation with Dawoud Bey in Fullerton Hall
7:00 p.m.  Exhibition Viewing and Reception in Griffin Court
 
Be the first to see the Art Institute’s presentation of Harlem, U.S.A., a series of Dawoud Bey’s photographs that has not been shown in its entirety since it debuted at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. The evening begins with a conversation among Dawoud Bey; Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, author of the monograph Harlem Is Nowhere and essayist for Harlem, U.S.A.; and Matthew Witkovsky, Richard and Ellen Sandor Chair and Curator, Department of Photography. Dawoud Bey: Harlem, U.S.A. catalogues (Yale University Press) will be available for purchase. 
Reservation Required

http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/exhibition/dawoudbey

"Embodied: Black Identities in American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery"
February 18–June 26, 2011
Yale University Art Gallery

A collaboration among a team of students from Yale and the University of Maryland, College Park, Embodied: Black Identities in American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery features works that address, question, and complicate the paradigms that have mapped meanings onto African American bodies throughout history. The 54 works selected for the exhibition, representing the Gallery’s commitment during the past decade to growing this area of the collection, include paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, prints, drawings, and photographs. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

http://artgallery.yale.edu/pages/collection/exhibitions/ex_upcoming.php

"Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey"
January 21–March 20, 2011
Grand Rapids Art Museum

Bey traveled to six high schools in the Midwest and on both coasts. As artist-in-residence, he photographed students from across the economic, social, and ethnic spectrum. Class Pictures presents forty large-as-life photographs from this project.

http://www.artmuseumgr.org/home/page/Class+Pictures%3A+Photographs+by+Dawoud+Bey

"The Truth is Not in the Mirror: Photography and a Constructed Identity"
Jan. 19 - May 22, 2011
Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University

Photography as a medium has always been actively concerned with describing identity. While a portrait is typically an artistic representation of a person where verisimilitude is the goal, here the inquiry is questioned and expanded. Rather than employing a camera to create an objective document, the artists in this exhibition are often involved in constructing narrative sequences that pose questions with open-ended outcomes. 

The artists in the exhibition: Tina Barney, Claire Beckett, Valerie Belin, Dawoud Bey, Jesse Burke, Kelli Connell, Michael Corridore, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, Jason Florio, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Andy Freeberg, Lee Friedlander, David Hockney, Nikki S. Lee, Graham Miller, Martin Parr, Thomas Ruff, The Sartorialist, Alec Soth, Will Steacy, Larry Sultan, and Mickalene Thomas. 

http://www.marquette.edu/haggerty/exhibit_2011_01_photo_portraits.shtml

"Best Face Forward: The Presented View"
January 25th - March 11th
NIU Art Museum

Opening:  January 27th 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

Best Face Forward: The Presented View, examines studio portrait photography with art by Dawoud Bey, Nora Herting, and Andy Warhol.  Also included will be anonymously shot and unidentified photos from the private collection of Charles Rudolph, including 19th century tin-types and early 20th century mug-shots.  Each body of work explores an aspect of the circular relationship between artist/photographer, subject and audience.
Artists Talks will be held after the opening reception - Thursday January 27, 6:00 p.m.

http://www.artslant.com/chi/events/show/144582-best-face-forward-the-presented-view

"Dawoud Bey's Harlem, USA"
November 11, 2010 - March 13, 2011
Studio Museum in Harlem

In Dawoud Bey’s Harlem, USA, the artist takes viewers on a journey through this historic neighborhood. As a young man growing up in Queens, Bey (b. 1953) was intrigued by his family’s history in Harlem. His parents met at church there and it was home to many family and friends he visited as a child. Bey began making photographs at sixteen, after viewing the work of James VanDerZee (1886–1983) for the first time. 

http://www.studiomuseum.org/exhibition/dawoud-beys-harlem-usa

"Class Pictures: Photograph by Dawoud Bey" and "Dawoud Bey: First Year Florida"
October 10, 2010 - January 2, 2011
Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art

This fall, the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida will present two photography exhibitions by Dawoud Bey, Dawoud Bey: First-Year Florida Project and Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey. The companion exhibitions depict youth at a pivotal transitional period in their lives. The First-Year Florida Project, commissioned by the Harn, features students at the University of Florida at the start of their first year of college. 

http://artlog.com/events/44271-dawoud-bey

"Mixing Metaphors: The Aesthetic, the Social and the Political in African American Art"
August 14 - December 17, 2010
Howard University Gallery of Art

Howard University and Bank of America showcase a significant collection of contemporary African American art from the Bank of America Collection

http://www.howard.edu/library/art@howard/goa/exhibitions.htm

"New Paradigms: How "We" Are Influencing Art"
Friday, April 9th at 6:30 PM
Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium

A conversation featuring Kehinde Wiley, Dawoud Bey, and Theaster Gates

This conversation features three African American artists who will discuss their art practice and the ways in which the have gone about shaping their practice and the various ways in which they each engage art history and the museum.

http://www.artic.edu/aic/calendar/event?EventID=7396

"Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey"
March 26 through August 6. 2010
Chrysler Museum

On view in the Frank Photography Gallery

Photographer Dawoud Bey spent five years traveling to high schools across the country, photographing teens from across the economic, racial, and ethnic spectrum. Class Pictures presents 40 of his large-as-life photographs, each accompanied by a commentary in which the sitters describe themselves and their lives. The result is a touching, funny, and sometimes harrowing portrait of American youth at the dawn of the 21st century.

http://www.chrysler.org/exhibitions.asp#bey

"From Then to Now : Masterworks of Contemporary African American Art"
January 29th, 2010 through May 9th, 2010
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland

Addressing a range of themes and issues, the exhibition presents an overview of the rich cultural heritage voiced by contemporary African-American artists in their examination of history, identity, and memory. Their universal search for meaning in facing the past and confronting the challenges of the present binds these works together in what ultimately represents a celebration of and triumph of the creative spirit.

http://www.mocacleveland.org/exhibition_details.php?exhibition_id=60

College Art Association
February 10th, 2010
Keynote Address: The Art World and The Real World: Bridging the Great Divide"

Dawoud Bey is a world-renowned photographer and Distinguished College Artist and Associate Professor of Art at Columbia College Chicago. He delivered this keynote address at CAA’s Convocation, held during the 98th Annual Conference, on Wednesday, February 10, 2010.
This text is copyright © 2010 by Dawoud Bey.

College Art Association Newsletter
Pages 16 - 21

http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/caa-news-03-10.pdf

"Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey"
Emory University Visual Arts Gallery
February 4-March 4, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, February 4, 5-7 pm

The Visual Arts Gallery is Emory University’s center for the presentation of contemporary art. Approaching contemporary art as a cultural prism though which all manner of inquires pass—literary and historical, scientific and social scientific, ethical and spiritual—the gallery shows work by leading national and international artists.

http://visualarts.emory.edu/events/lucideye.html

College Art Association
Featured Convocation Speaker
February 10, 2010
Hyatt Regency Hotel

Dawoud Bey will deliver the keynote address during Convocation at the 2010 CAA Annual Conference in Chicago. He is the second photographer in four years to speak at Convocation, with Duane Michals delivering the keynote address at the 2007 conference in New York.

http://conference.collegeart.org/2010/events.php

PhotoAlliance Lecture
Friday, January 29, 2010
San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall

The PhotoAlliance lecture series brings to the Bay Area a rich range of talent and ideas to further the communities dialogue with contemporary photography.

http://www.photoalliance.org/index.php?option=com_extcalendar&Itemid=61

"Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey"
October 24 - December 18
Kresge Art Museum
Michigan State University

Opening reception:
Sunday, October 25, 2-4 pm, Kresge Art Museum
Hosted by Friends of Kresge Art Museum

Lecture:
Monday, October 26, 2009, 7 pm, Room A133, Life Sciences
Department of Art & Art History
Visiting Artist Lecture Series

http://www.artmuseum.msu.edu/exhibitions/current/Dawoud%20Bey/

"Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey"
April 16 - July 12, 2009
Milwaukee Art Museum

There will be a dialogue with the Dawoud Bey and MAM Curator of Photography Lisa Hostetler on April 23rd followed by an opening reception.

http://www.mam.org/bey

Symposium: Yousuf Karsh and the Art of Photography
April 4, 2009, from 1 - 5 PM
Art Institute of Chicago

Dawoud Bey, Jerry Fielder, David Travis and Colin Westerbeck discuss issue of portraiture in conjunction with the AIC exhibition Yousuf Karsh: Regarding Heroes, which celebrates the centenary of the birth of the renowned portraitist Yousuf Karsh.

"State of the Art" Lecture: 
Dawoud Bey - Representing the Human Subject
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Frist Center for the Visual Arts

The State of the Art lecture series focuses on issues in the contemporary art world and feature presentations by nationally and internationally renowned authorities. This lecture coincides with an exhibition on view at the Frist Center: The Best of Photography and Film from the George Eastman House Collection, which features more than 200 iconic photographs, films and film-related materials selected from the world-renowned collection of George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York. 

http://www.fristcenter.org/site/calendar/eventdetail.aspx?cid=700

"Artists at Work Forum: How to Turn Your Art Into a Career"
Thursday, December 18, 6 - 7:30 pm
Chicago Cultural Center, 1st Floor Garland Room
78 E. Washington St.
Free

Paul Klein talks with artists Joyce Owens, Tony Fitzpatrick, Dawoud Bey and Juan Angel Chavez about “what they do to have their art take care of them” - about what strategies they employ, about strategic career mistakes they’ve made, about specific examples that they’ve used and jettisoned, about specific things that have worked, about strategies, techniques, and devises they use repeatedly, about how they'd advise others. How much do they shape their own luck?

"Portraits Re/Examined: A Dawoud Bey Project"
December 13, 2008 - February 16, 2009
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD

During Bey’s artist-in-residency project, the artist collaborated with 12 teenagers from several Baltimore-area public, private, and home schools in a summer workshop that began with an exploration of how race, class and identity have been addressed in portraiture throughout art history. The Walters’ collection became the basis for discussions about museum practice, its role in society and the role of contemporary art in museums with historical collections. The resulting focus exhibition Portraits Re/Examined: A Dawoud Bey Project, curated by Bey and the teens, features 10 photographic portraits by Bey, juxtaposed with paintings, drawings, and portrait miniatures from the Walters’ collection to create a unique dialogue.

http://www.thewalters.org/eventscalendar/eventdetails.aspx?e=1051

"Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures"
December 13, 2008 - February 21, 2009
The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD

In conjunction with Class Pictures, the Contemporary Museum, in cooperation with the Walters Art Museum, hosted a residency program during summer 2008. The workshop will culminate in an exhibition at the Walters, curated by Bey and twelve Baltimore teens, focusing on changing conceptions of portraiture and identity throughout history.

http://www.contemporary.org/future.html

"Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey"
September 26 - November 23, 2008
Indianapolis Museum of Art

http://www.imamuseum.org/explore/exhibitions/dawoudbey

"Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey"
June 15th - September 7th, 2008
Weatherspoon Art Museum

In conjunction with the Aperture published book CLASS PICTURES, the exhibition will open at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC.
http://weatherspoon.uncg.edu/exhibitions/exh_detailf.asp?WamExID=112

There will be a dialogue with Dawoud Bey and Weatherspoon Art Museum Curator Xandra Edens
Dialogue: Dawoud Bey with Xandra Edens
http://weatherspoon.uncg.edu/events/events_detail.asp?WamCoeID=397

For full CLASS PICTURES Exhibition Touring Schedule: http://www.aperture.org/store/travex-detail.aspx?exhibition_id=42

"Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey"
September 4-December 30, 2007
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, September 28th, from 6-8 PM

Addison Gallery of American Art

In conjunction with the Aperture published book CLASS PICTURES, the exhibition will open at the Addison Gallery of American Art.  The exhibition will then travel to museums throughout the country through 2011.

http://www.andover.edu/

"Do You See What I See: Representing the Black Subject"
Photographs from the Collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art
Curated by Dawoud Bey in conjunction with The Discerning Eye: Five Perspectives on the Addison's Collection
Addison Gallery of American Art

September 4-December 30, 2007
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, September 28th, from 6-8 PM

Using the extensive collection of both historical and contemporary photographs in the collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Bey has curated a wide ranging exhibition which examines the ways in which the black subject has been represented throughout the history of photography. From early lynching photographs to pictures by Roy DeCarava, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Nicholas Nixon, and others, Bey also asks the viewer to examine the relationship between subject and photographer, and finally the viewer's own subjectivity in bringing meaning to these pictures. Several of Bey's own early photographs are included in the exhibition to show his own changing approach to the subject.

Dawoud was recently in Andover to install the "Class Pictures" exhibition, and to also install the exhibition "Do You See What I See: Representing the Black Subject" that he curated from the collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art. The exhibition includes pictures by a wide range of photographers, including Roy DeCarava, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Freidlander, Lonnie Graham, Nicholas Nixon, Michael Spano, and others. The exhibition also includes historical photographs such as lynching pictures, and other examples of the variously examined black subject. Both exhibitions are on view through December 30, 2007.

http://www.andover.edu/addison/exhibition/2007-Fall/DiscerningEye.htm

"A Dialogue on Photographic Representation with Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems"
Saturday, September 29, 2:00 PM
Addison Gallery of American Art

In conjunction with CLASS PICTURES Addison Gallery curator Allison Kemmerer, and artists Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems will have a wide ranging conversation. Bey and Weems, friends for over thirty years, will talk about their lives, work, and influence they have had on each other.

http://www.andover.edu/addison/public.htm

"Seeing and Being Seen
A Panel Discussion with Dawoud Bey and Wendy Ewald"
Presented by Aperture Foundation
The New School, Tishman Auditorium
Wednesday, October 17, 2007, 7:00 PM

Free Admission

Photographers Dawoud Bey and Wendy Ewald will be joined by students from the Expanding the Walls program at the Studio Museum in Harlem in this discussion about young people and representation. The discussion will be moderated by Phyllis Thompson from Harvard University.

http://www.aperture.org/store/events-month.aspx?Month=10

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Installation Views / Exhibition PDF

Americans have tended to take their ability to move freely through the world for granted. This ability to enact ones own mobility defines in some way an indelible aspect of the archetypal American character. To get in one’s car and “hit the road” as a form of wanderlust has long been a part of the popular construct of the American leisure ideal. It is apparent, however, that this ability to move freely through the world is not a privilege that extends to all quarters, and even Americans are finding increasing intrusions into their travel routines are now imposed by both the present national security dictates along with the rising cost of gasoline. But still American’s penchant for casual wanderlust persists as a kind of psychic birthright. For others the act of travel and moving from place to place can be a much more complex experience, enacted for any number of reasons, of which pleasure might be the least of them. Whether to escape political persecution or to better one’s station and opportunities, a vast number of people are in movement from place to place for reasons of a more urgent and imperative nature.

The camera itself has a long history of being used as a kind of passport, making accessible the inaccessible, and legitimating the photographer’s presence in a place that would otherwise be off limits. This desire to venture out from home may, in fact, also be motivated by a desire to re-establish just what and where home is in relation to ones personal history, since in the case of immigration or voluntary or self imposed exile the notion of home may not be a singular and fixed notion. Often the journeying out into the seemingly familiar reveals information that gives the lie to the reassuring sense of familiarity we expect to find in the places more close at hand.

The exhibition Are We There Yet? examines, through a range of lens-based work, the ways in which a shifting sense of place is visualized through various conceptual strategies. In the photographs of Howard Henry Chen, we come face to face with the artist’s own dual sense of home, and his attempts not only to visualize that back and forth journey, but also his attempt at cultural and personal retrieval. Born in Vietnam, Chen, at age three, left with his immediate family to come to the United States just as the war broke out in the mid-1970s. In his pictures we see a Vietnam that conforms to neither the war torn popular media image nor do we see the pre-war Vietnam that he left behind. Instead, the present Vietnam is a place where history, tourism, and a global culture and economy are surreally commingled. Alan Cohen’s photographs depict the sovereign borders of nations, states, and institutions throughout the world, the locations and markers that separate “here” from “there.” Using a highly formalized and consistent visual strategy to achieve his ends, along with the reductive materials of black and white film and print, he reduces these sites to cryptic descriptions that are as visually restrained as they are loaded with social history and tension. The photographs made in the Panama Canal Zone depict the site where, in 1964, Panamanian students challenged the imposition of this internal and international border in a struggle with U.S. Marines, with fatal results. Christine DiThomas’s photographs made in passing from the windows of numerous rail train trips describe an experience that will appear familiar to many, even as the motivations for those trips are as different as the persons engaged in them. Nonetheless, the scenes themselves exude a quality of déjà vu that makes us feel we that these experiences are ours as well, and that we remember seeing them before…somewhere. These haunting views of the passing American landscape evoke a timeless sense of longing, unmoored wanderlust and endless travel.

For Aron Gent, the rather bucolic sense evoked by his photographs of his family gathered at their summer home on the lake is offset by the presence of his aunt who is has Down syndrome. Currently looked after by Gent’s aging grandparents, her care when they depart lingers as a concern that helps to infuse these otherwise pastoral and leisure vacations scenes with a sense of uneasiness. Deftly staging these pictures, in which he often appears, Gent at once creates photographs rich in behavioral nuance and the evocation of place. The various encounters between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians at the Qalandia checkpoint, one of the largest Israeli military checkpoints in the occupied West Bank, is the subject of Rula Halawani’s photographs. In these pictures we see not the faces of the subjects locked on two sides of this tense interaction, but rather the isolated gestures of power and need, as papers, possessions, and person are scrutinized in a relationship of unequal power. In Halawani’s photographs ones right to passage is literally and visually scrutinized in such a way that even as we can’t identify the subjects, we can indeed discern the tense social narrative of closely monitored and regulated movement.

The transient experience of recent immigration is the subject of Surendra Lawoti’s photographs. Himself Nepalese, he has photographed amongst this particular immigrant community. The photographs are rich in the visual evocation of impermanence, and contain rich visual signifiers for the urgent moving from place to place, without ever setting down deep roots that marks much of recent immigrant life at the social margins. Curtis Mann has taken a radical material means to deconstruct the sense of place in his pictures. Beginning with appropriated photographs downloaded from different online photo sites, he then prints and chemically removes a good deal of the visual information in the photographs—along with the attendant specific narrative of place—leaving just enough information on which to then create his own fantastical and variously charged landscapes of the imagination. In Oscar Palacio’s photographs we are made to confront the distances between the mythology of historical sites, and the actual underwhelming experience that often occurs when one visits them. The mundane physical experience of these sites often stand in stark contrast to the constructed and received histories of them that compel us to drive endless miles across country to bear personal witness to them. Looking at Adriana Rios’ video “There is No Time,” it is apparent that the experience of place and time are entirely subjective, based in no small part on a host of social determinants. Time clearly moves more slowly for those with either no place to go, or those lacking the agency or station to determine their everyday movements in the world. The subjects in her video occupy socially and politically charged spaces that suggest a host of lingering tensions pulling at the edges of daily interactions.

Taken together, the various works in this exhibition challenge any easy sense of just where “there” is in the physical, geographical, political, and psychic landscape.

This special Atrium exhibition is of portraits from the permanent collection curated by the renowned Chicago-based photographer, Dawoud Bey, whose own work [was] on view in the exhibition "Class Pictures", through September 7. Each work was selected for its ability to create a momentary sense of engagement with the individual portrayed, reminding us that, in spite of our seeming differences, we are bound together in common humanity. Bey’s atrium exhibition opened on August 28, in conjunction with his lecture and dialogue with Weatherspoon curator Xandra Edens.

ARTISTS IN THE EXHIBITION
John Ahearn, Elizabeth Catlett, Chuck Close, Susanna Coffey, Catherine Opie, Red Grooms, Alex Katz, Nicholas Nixon, Robert Phillip, August Schwabe, Elizabeth O’Neill Verner

Wall Text / Installation Views

December 13, 2008 - February 16, 2009

Portraits Re/Examined: A Dawoud Bey Project was presented by the Contemporary Museum in collaboration with the Walters Art Museum. This artist-in-residence project took place in conjunction with the Contemporary’s exhibition of Bey’s Class Pictures. During Bey’s residency project, the artist collaborated with a diverse group of 12 teenagers from several Baltimore-area public, private, and home schools in a summer workshop that began with an exploration of how issues identity have been addressed in portraiture throughout art history. The Walters’ collection became the basis for discussions about museum practice, its role in society and the role of contemporary art in museums with historical collections.

Over the course of day long sessions during one month Bey conceived a project in which the students engaged in two kinds of activities: curating the exhibition of Bey’s photographs, pairing them with objects from the Walters historical collection that resonated with these pictures, creating a complex dialogue between them. Along with this curatorial activity students were also involved in an intensive study of the museum itself, meeting daily with staff from all of the museum’s various departments. The resulting exhibition Portraits Re/Examined: A Dawoud Bey Project, curated by Bey and the teens, featured 10 photographic portraits by Bey, juxtaposed with paintings, drawings, and portrait miniatures from the Walters’ collection to create a unique dialogue. This exhibition project ran concurrently with Class Pictures at the Contemporary Museum, which is located directly across the street from the Walters. A video documenting the project was shown at the Contemporary, further establishing a dialogue between these two very different museums, one which specializes in cutting edge contemporary work and the other an encyclopedic historical museum.

This project was made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services. Additional support wass provided by Carol and Alan Edelman, Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff, and The Paige Family Foundation.

Statement / Curating the Exhibitions / Museum Studies / The Exhibition:"Portraits Re-Examined"

“Dawoud Bey’s Projects”
by Julie Bernson
Director of Education, Addison Gallery of American Art
Phillips Academy, Andover

Dawoud Bey’s residency-based work began at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, in 1992 when he was invited by then-director Jock Reynolds to visit the campus and neighboring communities over the course of two months. In this period of time – and during three subsequent Addison residencies – Dawoud has created a series of critical/provocative engagements among students, teachers, schools, communities, and the museum. These engagements have also extended to a public school in neighboring Lawrence, MA that has participated in Addison Gallery Education programs for a number of years. Through discussions, conversations, creating photographs of high school students, and – during the most recent residency – curating, he has stimulated powerful discussions around topics ranging from the nature of identity and stereotypes to the nature of art practice and the role of the museum.

While Bey’s “Class Pictures” exhibition was at the Addison in 2007, he curated a show from the Addison’s collection, “Do You See What I See: Representing the Black Subject,” examining the various ways that the black subject has figured in a broad range of American photography. Classic American portrait paintings from the pre- and post-Revolutionary period were also on view in the museum during this time. The spontaneous, vulnerable personal narratives written by the high school sitters paired with Dawoud’s searingly direct photographs of them – along with the larger context of the historical images from the museum’s collection – provoked further engagements with students of many ages and backgrounds. From elementary to college-level, visits to the exhibition inspired student expression through their own photography and writing and continual reflection on representation – in both the museum and in their own school and community contexts. Bey’s practice as an artist continues to be a rich, deeply engaging and multifaceted one.

Link to Addison Gallery of American Art

Residency Documentation / Curatorial Documentation