Dawoud Bey: An American Project
Curatorial Introduction

Since the beginning of his career, Dawoud Bey (American, b. 1953) has used his camera to represent communities and histories that have been underrepresented or even unseen. He makes photographs both as a form of personal expression and as an act of social and political responsibility, insisting on the necessary work of artists and art institutions to break down obstacles to access, convene communities, and open dialogue.

Bey received his first camera as a gift at age fifteen. The following year he saw Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition, which included photomurals of residents of Harlem but little work by them, sparked vehement protests. Despite its serious flaws, the show inspired Bey to undertake his own documentary project about Harlem a few years later. It had offered object lessons in photography’s potential as a serious artistic medium, the power that lies in the twinned acts of representing and being represented, the camera’s ability to connect viewers to larger human experiences, and the role museums could play in fostering those exchanges.

Dawoud Bey: An American Project traces these through lines across the forty-five years of Bey’s career and his profound engagement with the Black subject. From his earliest street portraits in Harlem to his most recent series imagining an escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad, Bey has produced poignant meditations on visibility and power, race and our collective history. The title of the exhibition intentionally inserts his photographs into a long-running conversation about what it means to represent America with a camera. The question of who is considered an American photographer and whose story is an American story is particularly urgent today. Bey’s work offers a potent corrective to the gaps in our picture of American society and history—and an emphatic reminder of the ongoing impact of those omissions.

Corey Keller
Curator of Photography

Assisted by Sally Martin Katz, Curatorial Assistant, Photography

All works are courtesy the artist; Sean Kelly Gallery, New York; Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, unless otherwise noted.

Dawoud Bey: An American Project is co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The exhibition is co-curated by Corey Keller, Curator of Photography, SFMOMA, and Elisabeth Sherman, Assistant Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art.