A brush with... Dawoud Bey
About this episode
Dawoud Bey discusses his artistic influences and the cultural experiences that shape his work addressing the Black experience in America.
Dawoud Bey talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Bey, who was born in 1953 in New York, makes photographs and film installations that address the experience of Black people in the US, from the horrors of slavery via racist violence and the Civil Rights era to intimate moments in contemporary life. He began his career as a photographer in the 1970s with the consistent aim to work as an artist rather than a photojournalist. While he was celebrated from the start for his depictions of people and communities, he has always had a particular sensitivity to place, and after several decades in which portraiture and street photography were dominant strains in his practice, his work over the past decade has focused mostly on landscape. But even when they are not physically present, those who have lived in and travelled through the places he depicts are as much part of the photographs’ and films’ subject as the environments captured by his camera. He has said of recent series, for instance, that he wants to capture the landscape as seen and felt by the enslaved people…
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