Dawoud bey biography channel 7

Dawoud Bey in his studio, Photo by Jonathan Michael Castillo. Courtesy of the artist. Dawoud Bey is an artist and educator whose work on Black quotidian subjects situates him within a legacy and tradition of contemporary Black photographers in the United States. Originating his art practice as a musician and supported by his instructors in the Jazzmobile Workshops and his parents, Bey came to develop an artistic practice in both music and photography that highlighted and expanded his sense of community.

After making the transition to photography in the s, Bey took inspiration from the seemingly ordinary depictions of everyday folk in the photography of Roy DeCarava, Irving Penn, and Mike Disfarmer. In this excerpt, Bey allows us to witness his artistic journey through his retelling of the earliest, ordinary experiences of his youth and the way they motivate his extraordinary practice of seeing Blackness.

Courtesy of Marilyn Nance. It was a life-changing experience for me, and I think it was perhaps somewhat less life-changing for you. Dawoud Bey We came to Yale with very different sets of life and professional experiences, and yet we both ended up there at the same time. At that point in my life, grad school was still a defining moment.

I had actually started my undergrad at the School of Visual Arts back in , but I left after two years. I was so eager to get to know you because you grew up in Queens and seemed to already have so much experience.

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Can you talk about what Queens and New York City were like then? What does that community mean to you, and how has it changed? How do you maintain your connection to your origin story? One thing that I was initially aware of was the seemingly isolating experience of being an artist.