Three Women at a Parade, Harlem, NY, 1978. © Dawoud Bey
Martina and Rhonda, Chicago, IL, 1993. © Dawoud Bey
Ar the age of 16, New York native Dawoud Bey traveled from his home in Queens to see Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968, the controversial exhibition that opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969.
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As he gazed upon the portraits that James Van Der Zee made during the Harlem Renaissance, Bey recognised the profound power of the photograph to become both a repository for communal memory and a portal into another era – one that informs the way we live and think today.
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This innate understanding of the portrait at a young, formative age, provided the foundation upon which he has built a tremendous, transformative body of work. Over the past half a century, Bey’s photographs have become both art and artifact, evidence and testimony, document of the moment and letter to the future.
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Read the Full Story at Huck Online
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A Boy in Front of the Loew’s 125th Street Movie Theatre, Harlem, NY, 1976. © Dawoud Bey