Bard Professor An-My Lê Interviews Photographer Dawoud Bey for Bomb Magazine

An-My Lê, Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts, interviewed the renowned photographer Dawoud Bey, her friend and peer, for Bomb magazine’s Oral History Project, which aims to document the stories of distinguished visual artists of the African Diaspora. In conversation with Lê, Bey discusses his experiences as an artist, photographer, and educator, and the journey that has now cemented him within a legacy and tradition of contemporary Black photographers in the United States. “I felt beholden to that piece of the history that I had been responding to,” Bey said. “I wanted to extend that and also apply that history to the Black subject in a way that elevated the Black subject in the photograph, in a way that cut through the stereotypical, more socially pathologically driven representations of African American subjects in photographs. I started out wanting to make work in opposition to those kinds of stereotypical pathology-driven photographs. But as I began working and immersing myself in the work, that receded to the point where my ambition was to make the most honest, clear-eyed, resonant representation of what was in front of me.”

Post Date: 09-03-2024