Dawoud Bey

Recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," Dawoud Bey has created a body of photography that masterfully portrays the contemporary American experience on its own terms and in all of its diversity. Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply offers a forty-year retrospective of the celebrated photographer's work, from his early street photography in Harlem to his current images of Harlem gentrification. Photographs from all of Bey's major projects are presented in chronological sequence, allowing viewers to see how the collective body of portraits and recent landscapes create an unparalleled historical representation of various communities in the United States. Leading curators and critics--Sarah Lewis, Deborah Willis, David Travis, Hilton Als, Jacqueline Terrassa, Rebecca Walker, Maurice Berger, and Leigh Raiford--introduce each series of images. Revealing Bey as the natural heir of such renowned photographers as Roy DeCarava, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, and James Van Der Zee, Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply demonstrates how one man's search for community can produce a stunning portrait of our common humanity.
With images ranging from street photography in Harlem to a commemoration of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, this volume offers a forty-year career retrospective of the award-winning photographer Dawoud Bey.
Dawoud Bey's work is held by major collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Portrait Gallery, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In addition to the MacArthur fellowship, Bey's honors include the United States Artists Guthman Fellowship, 2015; the Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography, 2002; and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1991. He is Professor of Art and a former Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago.
[A] lavish retrospective.-- "The Chicago Tribune" (1/28/2019 12:00:00 AM)
[A] voluminous monograph with all the luxurious detail of a Phaidon-style tome and all the scholarly heft of a catalogue raisonn�.-- "Newcity Art" (2/26/2019 12:00:00 AM)
[A]n unparalleled historical representation of various communities in the United States. Prodigious is an apt descriptor for Seeing Deeply.-- "F-Stop Magazine" (1/27/2019 12:00:00 AM)
[Bey's] 'The Birmingham Project' is at D.C.'s National Gallery of Art, but if you can't make it, this imperial-size book is a fine alternative.-- "New York Magazine" (11/26/2018 12:00:00 AM)
[Bey's] elevation of the every day to the extraordinary is in the tradition of Gordon Parks and Roy DeCarava, but the legacy is all his own.-- "The Root" (12/13/2018 12:00:00 AM)
[Bey's] photography is inseparable from his audience and would be diminished without their approval and loyalty. If we hear the rhetoric of protest echoing in the nine chapters of this glorious book, it's against those who would underestimate the control, skill, resilience and shared humanity necessary for someone to make art with a camera of the quality we're holding.-- "Collector Daily" (11/27/2018 12:00:00 AM)
A beautiful retrospective of [Bey's] work.-- "PBS NewsHour" (3/15/2019 12:00:00 AM)
A mammoth retrospective volume, [Dawoud Bey] makes clear that a genius vision has coursed through [Bey's] work for more than 40 years.-- "Culture Type" (1/4/2019 12:00:00 AM)
An essential monograph...An artist whose craft draws forth the nuances of human expression, Bey shares as much about his subjects as he does about himself in this intimate and important book.-- "Contemporary And" (7/8/2019 12:00:00 AM)
An illustration of an incomporable photographer: one that places empathy, respect, and determination at the centre of their work.-- "Huck Magazine"
A] testament not only to Bey's long career as a working photographer but to an artist who is relentlessly exploring, reworking, and rethinking his method and medium.-- "American Suburb X" (2/9/2019 12:00:00 AM)
Bey's portraits prompt talk of souls; these are pictures that stare back. The gazes Bey captures on film simulate the experience of encounter...This is the drama of Bey's work, the relationship between picture and viewer, who is held by the image such that she cannot merely be a passerby but is confronted, rather, with questions of the soul.-- "Religious Studies Review" (3/1/2019 12:00:00 AM)
Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply carefully takes you through Bey's 40-year career to this point...As you dig deeper into his projects, you get a sense of how important representation and community are to Bey.-- "Eugene Weekly, Photography Books of the Year" (12/13/2018 12:00:00 AM)
Photographs from all of Bey's major projects are presented in chronological sequence, allowing viewers to see how the collective body of portraits and recent landscapes create an unparalleled historical representation of various communities in the United States.-- "Photo-eye Blog"
Producing contemporary photography is a delicate negotiation between aesthetic intuition and questions of autonomy. The medium is a chess game of vision and ethics--a game Dawoud Bey seems to have mastered...Through his every interaction with individual subjects and broader communities, the images he constructs are uniquely attentive to the weight of specificity. They tell stories, but not ones concerned with tidiness. Their power lies in narrative left lingering--thoughts of what remains outside the frame.-- "Flood Magazine" (12/26/2018 12:00:00 AM)
Seeing Deeply reveals [Bey's] decades-long exploration of community, memory, and photography...Ultimately, [Bey's] work is an ongoing exploration of photography's possibilities, informed by his research and cultural influences.-- "New York Times" (12/24/2018 12:00:00 AM)
The 1970s-era black-and-white street photographs from Harlem in Dawoud Bey...are remarkable for their lack of artifice. Some are candid, but in many the subject acknowledges the photographer and is yet at ease; this takes considerable skill. Unlike other portraits of blacks from the period that either valorize them or show them as pitiable, these give us credible persons we can acknowledge.-- "Wall Street Journal" (11/15/2018 12:00:00 AM)
This magnificent effusion of photographs and commentary is more than a riveting artistic and social experience; it is also a stunning exhibition of the human spirit.-- "The Virginian-Pilot" (7/26/2019 12:00:00 AM)
This retrospective is...a magnificent testament to what can be shown about people's pride and hope, and in an exemplary yet subtle manner seems to posit the idea that all us individuals, no matter what our background and heritage may be, are interested in building a better future and would benefit from collaboration. This photobook is destined to become a classic!-- "The PhotoBook Journal" (1/25/2019 12:00:00 AM)
Through Bey's lens, his subjects receive a level of respect and a glimpse into their shared humanity that is nothing short of marvelous.-- "Z�calo Public Square" (3/26/2019 12:00:00 AM)
Until [Bey] gets his inevitable museum retrospective, Seeing Deeply will do nicely. His Harlem series, his portraits of high school students, his Birmingham Project exploring a 1963 church bombing that killed four girls--all here, in big, simple presentations offset by essays (from writers including Hilton Als). It's a joy.-- "Chicago Tribune" (9/27/2018 12:00:00 AM)
Viewers experience how the collective body of portraits and newer landscapes create an unprecedented historical portrayal of different communities in the United States.-- "World of Print" (8/7/2018 12:00:00 AM)