Milwaukee Art Museum presents contemporary American youth in Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures
The words and faces of forty students make up a penetrating view into contemporary American youth in Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures, on view April 16-July 12, 2009 at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
A compelling juxtaposition of first- and third-person perspectives, the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue challenge teenage stereotypes as they present a highly diverse portrait of a generation.
Omar, 2005. Image courtesy Dawoud Bey and Aperture Foundation, from the book Class Pictures (Aperture, 2007).
Shalanta, 2003. Image courtesy Dawoud Bey and Aperture Foundation, from the book Class Pictures (Aperture, 2007).
To create Class Pictures, Dawoud Bey spent three to four weeks in each of seventeen public and private schools on both coasts and in the Midwest, taking formal portraits of individual students. Each of the forty photographs on view is made in a classroom or other school setting during one forty-five-minute period.
Antoine, 2006. Image courtesy Dawoud Bey and Aperture Foundation, from the book Class Pictures (Aperture, 2007).
Kevin, 2005. Image courtesy Dawoud Bey and Aperture Foundation, from the book Class Pictures (Aperture, 2007).
At the start of the sitting, each subject writes a brief autobiographical statement. By turns poignant, funny, or harrowing, these revealing words are an integral part of the project, and appear alongside each photograph in the exhibition.
Lauren, 2006. Image courtesy Dawoud Bey and Aperture Foundation, from the book Class Pictures (Aperture, 2007).
Usha, 2006. Image courtesy Dawoud Bey and Aperture Foundation, from the book Class Pictures (Aperture, 2007).
About Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey (b. New York, 1953) earned his MFA from Yale University School of Art and is professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago. He has been featured in numerous exhibitions—including a mid-career survey at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 1995—and received several awards, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Bey has exhibited photographs in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; National Portrait Gallery, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial.
Aperture
A not-for-profit organization devoted to photography and the visual arts, has organized this traveling exhibition and produced the accompanying publications. The exhibition is coordinated at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Curator of Photographs Lisa Hostetler. The exhibition is sponsored by the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Contemporary Arts Society, Rockwell Automation, and Joanne Murphy.
DAWOUD BEY: CLASS PICTURES
On view: April 16–July 12, 2009
Artist talk and reception on Thursday, April 23, 2009
Press Tour
Thursday, April 23, 11:30 to 1:30 p.m.
Tour the galleries with the artist and coordinating curator Lisa Hostetler, followed by lunch in the Museum’s Café Calatrava.
To RSVP contact John Eding
P: 414-224-3246
john.eding@mam.org
The Milwaukee Art Museum
700 North Art Museum Drive
Milwaukee, WI 53202
www.mam.org
Image courtesy Dawoud Bey and Aperture Foundation, from the book Class Pictures (Aperture, 2007).
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