dawoud bey & carrie mae weems in dialogue

shows had only just now come to pass, he quipped, “Well, you can’t invite yourself in, you know someone has to invite you!” When he wasn't participating in gallery talks, he visited the local exhibits of artists whose work he admires, including Henry Taylor, Robert Pruitt and Milford Graves. Unique to the Getty exhibition is Bey’s “Birmingham Project,” a collection of portraits commemorating the children who lost their lives in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama.īey, who lives in Chicago and is a Columbia College professor of photography, traveled to Los Angeles in April for the opening events of both shows. As with the gallery show, there are images from Bey’s late-’80s “Street Portraits” series and his three landscape-focused collections - “Harlem Redux,” an exploration of a gentrifying neighborhood as well as “Night Coming Tenderly, Black” and “In This Here Place,” both of which address the past enslavement of African Americans. On view through July 9, that exhibition traces the career milestones of the two celebrated photographers, who are contemporaries as well as friends. The exhibition coincides with the opening of “ Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue ” at Getty Center. The exhibition, which runs through June 30, is a sampler of his work spanning from his “Harlem, U.S.A.” series to “In This Here Place,” capturing scenes from Louisiana plantations.

Last month, the renowned artist debuted his first-ever Los Angeles solo show, “ Dawoud Bey: Pictures 1976 – 2019,” at Sean Kelly gallery in Hollywood. Starting in his native New York in the 1970s and, more recently, traveling to the Deep South, he has created a critically acclaimed body of work that both honors history and illuminates everyday life. For the better part of five decades, photographer Dawoud Bey has aimed his lens at the faces and spaces of Black Americans.

Dawoud bey & carrie mae weems in dialogue