I attended an online study event, The Politics of Portraiture, given by Arpita Shah and one of the photographers whose work was featured, and which we discussed, was Dawoud Bey. The work we looked at was his series Harlem, USA.

Born in 1953 and growing up in Queens, New York; Bey started taking photographs at the age of 16 having been inspired by seeing the work of James Van Der Zee (1886 – 1983). Van Der Zee documented Harlem over sixty years and his work was featured in the contentious 1969 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Harlem on My Mind. Inspired by Van Der Zee’s work and with family connections in Harlem, Bey spent five years (1975 – 1979) documenting the everyday life and people of Harlem.

What I like about these images is the sense of connection between the photographer and the people in the them, they seem comfortable in Bey’s presence and appear relaxed and natural; not performing for the camera. In the Politics of Portraiture session with Arpita Shah she spoke about the importance of forming long term relationships with the people you are photographing and by working in Harlem for five years, Bey obviously gained the confidence of the people living there which I think comes across in his images.

Sources

The Studio Museum in Harlem. 2010. Dawoud Bey’s Harlem, USA. [online] Available at: <https://studiomuseum.org/exhibition/dawoud-beys-harlem-usa&gt; [Accessed 18 April 2020].

En.wikipedia.org. 2020. Dawoud Bey. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawoud_Bey&gt; [Accessed 18 April 2020].

NYCgo.com. 2020. ‘Harlem, USA’: Historic Photos By Dawoud Bey. [online] Available at: <https://www.nycgo.com/photo-galleries/harlem-usa-dawoud-bey-photgraphs&gt; [Accessed 18 April 2020].

En.wikipedia.org. 2020. James Van Der Zee. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Van_Der_Zee&gt; [Accessed 18 April 2020].

Cotter, H., 2015. What I Learned From A Disgraced Art Show On Harlem. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/arts/design/what-i-learned-from-a-disgraced-art-show-on-harlem.html&gt; [Accessed 18 April 2020].

En.wikipedia.org. 2019. Harlem On My Mind Protest. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_on_My_Mind_protest&gt; [Accessed 18 April 2020].