Dawoud Bey

(Queens, New York City, New York, 1953 - )

North America, American

Dawoud Bey initially achieved distinction for his photographic series “Harlem USA,” which was exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. A student at the School of Visual Arts from 1976-78, Bey earned his B. A. at Empire State College, SUNY in 1990 and his MFA from Yale School of Art in 1993. In his ongoing project dedicated to portraiture, initially focusing on depictions of African-American subjects, Bey moved from using a 35 mm. camera to capture subjects in early black and white prints to a 4 x 5 camera requiring a tripod to working with a large scale Polaroid that produced unique images with immense detail. The artist began introducing additional subjects into his compositions, capturing friends, mothers and children, then new acquaintances in compositions where figures were interrupted by and extended over multiple panels. A Professor of Art at Columbia College in Chicago since 1998, since 2010 Bey has been accorded one-person exhibitions at George Eastman House, Mary Boone Gallery, Birmingham Museum of Art, the Renaissance Society in Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago and the Studio Museum of Harlem. Among the collections in which his work is represented at the Art Institute of Chicago, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Walker Art Center and Whitney Museum of American Art.

Illinois, United States

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