Dawoud Bey: Early Portraits

Dawoud Bey: Early Portraits at Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago, IL. "...brings together for the first time selections from two seminal groups of photographs by this major American artist. "Harlem, USA," the photographer's first project, completed in the mid-late 1970s, and "Street Portraits" were made in the late 1980s through early 1990s. As a youngster growing up in Queens, NY, Bey was intrigued by his family's history in Harlem. His parents met at church there and it was home to many family members and friends he visited as a child. Bey began making photographs at sixteen, after viewing the work of James VanDerZee and other photographers in the 'Harlem On My Mind' exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969. Further experiences viewing the works of Roy DeCarava, Mike Disfarmer, Irving Penn, and Richard Avedon clarified his interest in photographing the human subject." More... Works by Dawoud Bey at his personal site.