Dawoud Bey Featured On NPR Morning Edition

If you have five minutes to spare—better yet, make time—to listen to or read Karen Michel’s feature story about photographer Dawoud Bey. His career stretches back over 40 years, during which he travelled to create a chronicle of Black life in the USA.

He’s not exactly a documentary photographer, but more of a director. He places subjects and adds props to make the images believable, citing Roy DeCarava as an influence and John Coltrane for helping him to feel confident improvising.

He’s known for large-scale black art & street photography. He studied at Empire State College and the Yale University School of Art. Recently he received a “Genius Grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation. He is a professor of art and a Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College (Chicago) and is represented by the Stephen Daiter Gallery, the Rena Bransten Gallery, and the Mary Boone Gallery.

His An American Project shows until March 14 at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and then moves to New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.

Fred Stewart and Tyler Collins (detail) by Dawoud Bey, created 2012, printed 2014, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017645553/. Models show the ages of a victim of the bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and also the age he could have achieved.