Night Coming Tenderly, Black: Untitled #19 (Creek and Trees)

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These works are part of a series Dawoud Bey created for the inaugural FRONT International triennial, held in Akron, Cleveland and Oberlin in 2018. The artist photographed both confirmed and rumored Underground Railroad sites in Northeast Ohio encountered by African Americans fleeing slavery prior to the Civil War and printed them in a low contrast, velvety black. Bey explained that he wanted to use the history of the Underground Railroad “to create a visual reimagining of its landscape, to make work that evokes the spatial and sensory experience of fugitive slaves moving toward freedom under the cover of darkness.” As he composed his images, Bey imagined his own Black body in the place of those of the fugitive slaves, photographing from the angle of someone watching and waiting in secret.