Dawoud Bey (born David Edward Smikle, 1953) is an American photographer and educator whose work interrogates visibility, race, place, and historical memory. Raised in Queens, New York, during the height of the civil rights movement, he began making photographs in Harlem in 1975. His early series Harlem, USA, first shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979, established him as a close observer of Black community life. Over a career spanning five decades, Bey has moved between street-based portraiture, large-scale studio portraits, landscape photography, and film installations, always with a deliberate attention to how Black Americans are represented.

Bey’s visual language is marked by an empathetic, collaborative approach to portraiture. He often worked with large-format cameras in informal public settings, inviting passersby—especially adolescents—to pose for multiple frame portraits that were later combined into multipanel images. This process grants his subjects a self-conscious dignity rarely seen in documentary photography. In his later projects, Bey shifted from the human figure to landscapes charged with historical trauma, producing darkened, atmospheric views of sites connected to slavery and the civil rights era. These works demand slow looking and are often presented as immersive installations.

Three major bodies of work anchor his achievement. Harlem, USA (1970s) captures the texture of everyday Black life, anticipating later interest in community-based portraiture. The Chicago Project (2003) continues his engagement with adolescents, this time across a broader racial and economic spectrum. The Birmingham Project, first realized around the fiftieth anniversary of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, pairs portraits of survivors and descendants with contemporary residents of the city, creating a commemoration across generations and media. His large retrospective Dawoud Bey: An American Project traveled to institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the High Museum of Art, reflecting his standing as a central figure in American photography.

Educated at the School of Visual Arts and later earning an MFA from Yale School of Art in 1993, Bey has combined practice with pedagogical work, mentoring young photographers through community projects and teaching positions. He received a MacArthur Fellowship, a recognition that has amplified public awareness of his contributions. His commitment to collaborative process and historical consciousness places him in dialogue with contemporaries such as Carrie Mae Weems and Lorna Simpson, while his emphasis on place and memory extends the legacy of documentary photographers like Roy DeCarava.

For photobook collectors, Bey’s publications offer significant insight into his working method and visual philosophy. Dawoud Bey on Photographing People and Communities (2019), part of the Photography Workshop Series, distills his collaborative ethics and technical approach into a useful handbook. Exhibition catalogs such as Dawoud Bey: An American Project reproduce his portraits and landscapes with careful sequencing that mirrors the immersive experience of his installations. Collectors seeking a gateway into his career should begin with monographs that pair his landmark series, as the juxtaposition of street portraits and contemplative landscapes reveals the evolution of his thinking about history and representation.

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Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953) is an American artist best known for her photography, video, and text-based installations exploring family, race, gender, class, and cultural identity. Her landmark series ‘Kitchen Table Series’ (1990) remains a touchstone, and she was a 2013 MacArthur Fellow.

Dawoud Bey (born 1953) is an American photographer and educator known for large-scale portraits of marginalized subjects, Harlem street photography, and the 2017 series ‘Night Coming Tenderly, Black’ reimagining the Underground Railroad. He is a professor at Columbia College Chicago and a MacArthur Fellow (2017).