Dawoud Bey is a photographer, artist, and educator based in Chicago and New York. He is Professor Emeritus of Art and a former Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago. Bey holds a BFA in photography from Empire State College and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. He began his career as a street photographer, making portraits of historically underrepresented subjects; this is evident in his first solo exhibition, Harlem, USA (1975-1979), at the Studio Museum in Harlem. At the heart of his art practice is a deep desire to connect and collaborate with the communities he photographs. Bey has pioneered programs that redefine how artists engage with institutions, while striving to make institutional spaces more accessible to the communities they serve. Class Pictures (2002-2006) is a striking series of large-scale color portraits and texts of high-school students from a range of economic, social, and ethnic backgrounds. In this project, Bey collaborated with young people and institutions throughout the United States to produce a diverse collection of portraits that challenge stereotypes of teenagers. His more recent work focuses on the construction of history and collective memory. The Birmingham Project (2013) is a paired portrait series that memorializes the lives of six young African American children killed in the Ku Klux Klan’s bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. In Harlem Redux (2014-2017), Bey revisits Harlem to witness an urban landscape dramatically transformed by gentrification. Night Coming Tenderly, Black (2017) is a series of large-scale, black-and-white series of photographs that reimagine the landscape of the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses that aided enslaved African Americans on their path to freedom. Bey is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a MacArthur Genius Award in 2017. In 2024, Bey celebrated his induction into the Academy of Arts and Sciences.
At the Academy, Bey will produce a series of photographs focused on the landscape surrounding the site of the 1884-85 Berlin Conference. Convened by Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of Germany, the conference brought together fourteen European colonial powers and concluded with the signing of the General Act of Berlin, which aimed to regulate European colonization and trade on the African continent during the so-called “Scramble for Africa,” which effectively partitioned the African continent. Bey may also photograph the landscape surrounding the Reichstag, whose construction in 1884 coincided with the initial meeting of the Berlin Conference.
Meet Dawoud Bey
A short portrait filmed at the Hans Arnhold Center, introducing the work and ideas behind fellows’ projects in Berlin.
Upcoming events
Discover what’s coming up in the Academy’s public program this semester.
Past events
Lectures, readings, and conversations from the Academy’s public program.
Landscape and Memory
The visual weight of the lives that once shaped the landscape
Berlin Journal Articles
Essays, interviews, and creative work published in the Academy’s annual magazine.
Books
Books written by fellows of the Academy, many begun during a semester in Berlin.
Videos
Lectures, readings, and conversations filmed at the Hans Arnhold Center.
Landscape and Memory
Dawoud Bey has been making work that engages the American landscape and its history in relation to the African American past.
Fellow Spotlight: Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey is producing a series of photographs focused on the site of the 1884-85 Berlin Conference.
Explore Past Fellows
Hakim Abderrezak
Marco Abel
David Abraham
