Dawoud Bey: An American Project — Review
When you visit a museum or gallery to take in an exhibition, do you ponder the display process? Do you stand back and survey the layout of the featured artworks? Do you evaluate whether or not the exhibit seems easy on the eye, or overly busy, or too spare? Do you like the way pieces have been grouped?
I found it curious but also intriguing that the Whitney Museum of American Art has displayed the Dawoud Bey: An American Project photographs on two separate floors. In fact, two very separate floors– the first and the eighth or top exhibition floor. Why would they separate the works so widely?
The first floor gallery is small, and the whole of the eighth floor space was dedicated to the bulk of Bey’s exhibition. And actually this worked to the advantage of the special grouping on the first floor, a selection of portraits from The Birmingham Project.
A portion of the photographs in the similar An American Project were displayed in “Grief and Grievance,” the powerful show seen this past spring at the New Museum. This year Bey’s work was also represented in the Art Students League show “”Creating Community: Cinque Arts Gallery.” Thus his work has been in the public eye this year in New York City, fitting for the Queens native whose first major work was conducted in Harlem.
The portrait pairings in the first floor gallery are all in black-and-white, and have a timeless quality. They commemorate the 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in which four Black girls were murdered. Here are 14 portrait photographs, of men and women, boys and girls, all straight forward portraits. They are direct views, not at all gimmicky. A few of these portraits feature people who give off a penetrating look that draws you in. One in particular, of a young girl, is both mesmerizing and unsettling. The girl’s look is wise beyond her years. This pairing of Betty Selvage and Faith Speights (the girl) will sear into your memory.
On the eighth floor, the photos are laid out almost as if this was a walk-through apartment that just so happened to be decorated with several amazing photographs. The layout grants the display a certain intimacy.
A significant portion of the exhibition is given over to portraits, many of them fairly traditional but some of an experimental nature. The “20 x 24 Polaroids” composite styled photos of people are a bit gimmicky and a bit strange, but you might also gaze at them and then think, why haven’t I seen this done more often, it makes sense. For instance, there are six portrait sections of “Earl” and each shows different parts of his face and body, but placed together as a whole (with some overlap); another six part portrait shows “Martina and Rhonda.” A two part portrait shows “Hilary and Taro.” These group portraits look deceptively easy to make; the details that go into these large format photographs make them extra special.
One gallery room groups together a series of large, dark black and white photographs called “Night Coming Tenderly, Black.” This project is named for the final line in the Langston Hughes poem “Dream Variations.” Eerie and earthy, they were inspired by the Ohio section of the Underground Railroad. “Untitled #2” features trees and farmhouses, and the inky stillness of the photograph makes it akin to a painting.
Another room features photos of students and is called “Class Pictures” and I particularly liked a photo of “Gerard,” an eager but serious looking high schooler. His arms are folded and he exudes mild confidence. This set of photographs of teenagers is a multi-racial grouping.
There were several photographs showing slices of life in Harlem, some from early in Bey’s photographic career (in black and white), and others (in color) from “Harlem Redux” later on. These include subjects such as “West 124th Street and Lenox Avenue” (2016) and “Two Girls From A Marching Band,” 1990; clad in their band outfits, they hold their instruments, and look pensive.
One of my favorite photos of the whole show is from the “Type 55 Polaroid Street Portraits.” It is a casual photo of a young boy in Brooklyn, eating a snack called a Foxy Pop; the plastic holder dangles from his mouth like a snake tongue. Haven’t many of us done that as kids, slurped on a juicy ice pop, and then played with the plastic wrapper? As well, the boy’s blasé demeanor gives it a sly sense of humor.
Photography is an art and craft that is omnipresent, a form of documentation and of framing life’s moments. Bey does gravitate to portraits, but he has worked in various styles with impressive success. He offers a strong sense of documentation of people and documentation of activities and the times which they represent. As viewers we want to engage with these photographs because they are realistic and have an emotional quality, even if they are somewhat experimental in style. This Whitney retrospective was refreshing and touching.
This remarkable exhibition closed on October 3rd, but you can still view several of the photographic works on the Whitney Museum’s website. The photographs and the accompanying text are displayed well and you will get a sense of what the exhibition was like. You can pair that with the material about the Grief and Grievance exhibition.