From 1916 until 1969, James VanDerZee operated a portrait studio at various addresses in Harlem. In his heyday, from the 20s to the 40s, he took pictures of prominent Harlem figures like Marcus Garvey, the preacher Daddy Grace and Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. But in the latter part of his career, he spent more of his time on a mail-order business re-touching and restoring other people's old photographs. The same year that he closed his last location, however, his work was featured in the exhibition Harlem on My Mind at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Although the exhibition was controversial, the attention that it attracted to VanDerZee's work finally brought the photographer, at age 83, the acclaim he deserved. This intimate catalogue recalls the environment in which VanDerZee worked and lived. While he did make portraits of local celebrities, including the stars of the many legitimate theaters open in Harlem before the war, his real bread-and-butter were clients from the community's thriving middle class. Despite laboring under related commercial constraints, VanDerZee pursued his work with imagination and verve, photographing his clients before elaborate backdrops or sets, making complex group portraits of Elks' lodge members, jazz bands, and ladies' clubs in their own settings.

The James Vanderzee Studio

Arts & Photography

Westerbeck, Colin

Bey, Dawoud

Van Der Zee, James

Individual Artists

Art Inst of Chicago Museum Shop

Published for Jordan Casteel's major New Museum show, Within Reach surveys her paintings exploring the nuances of Black subjectivity In her large-scale oil paintings, New York-based artist Jordan Casteel (born 1989) takes up questions of Black subjectivity and representation by examining the gestures, spaces and forms of nonverbal communication that underpin portraiture. "There is a certain amount of mindfulness that it requires ... to be present with someone in a moment." she explains. "I've always had an inclination towards seeing people who might be easily be unseen." Published for Casteel's first solo museum exhibition in New York, this volume brings together 40 large-scale paintings from throughout her career, including works from the celebrated series Visible Man (2013-14) and Nights in Harlem (2017), along with recent cropped "subway paintings" and portraits of her students at Rutgers University-Newark. Whether depicting former classmates from Yale, nude and in serene repose; street vendors near her home in Harlem; anonymous New Yorkers huddled on the subway; or her own students, posed largely in domestic interiors among their personal belongings, she explores how both public and private spheres can serve as frames for an inner life. This generously illustrated, oversized publication honors the larger-than-life scale of the artist's work. It is the first comprehensive monographic publication on Casteel's work and includes texts by Dawoud Bey, Amanda Hunt and Lauren Haynes, and conversations conducted with the artist by Massimiliano Gioni and Thelma Golden.

Jordan Casteel: Within Reach

GOLDEN, Thelma

Haynes, Lauren

Hunt, Amanda

New Museum

Is it possible for a photographic portrait to reveal anything "real" about its subject? As part of a twelve-week residency at the University of Chicago's Smart Museum of Art, acclaimed photographer Dawoud Bey asked this question of twelve teenagers from nearby schools. This fully illustrated book unpacks the process of Bey's ambitious residency and its products: a major exhibition pairing Bey's portraits of each student with audio portraits—included here on CD—created by award-winning radio producers Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister, as well as an exhibition of portraits curated by the students themselves.

Dawoud Bey: The Chicago Project

Smith, Stephanie

Terrassa, Jacqueline

Meister, Elizabeth

Collison, Dan

Photography & Video

Smart Museum Of Art, The University Of C

Since 1975, photographer Dawoud Bey has developed a body of work distinguished for its commitment to portraiture as a means for reflecting social circumstances. Ranging from street encounters to studio portraits, Bey has investigated numerous photographic methods to find increased engagement with his subjects. The Renaissance Society exhibition this catalogue accompanies (May 13 – July 13, 2012) included selections from Bey's work spanning the thirty years from 1982 to the present. The exhibition offered a comprehensive look at Bey's oeuvre, and provided an opportunity to explore related subjects in art history and social discourse, such as the presentation of self, race, site, and the relationship between artist and subject. Includes essays by Arthur Danto and Julie Bernson as well as an interview between Bey and the Renaissance Society's Associate Curator and Director of Education, Hamza Walker.

Dawoud Bey: Picturing People

DANTO, Arthur C.

Walker, Hamza

Bernson, Julie

Renaissance Society

Recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” Dawoud Bey has created a body of photography that masterfully portrays the contemporary American experience on its own terms and in all of its diversity.
Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply offers a forty-year retrospective of the celebrated photographer’s work, from his early street photography in Harlem to his current images of Harlem gentrification. Photographs from all of Bey’s major projects are presented in chronological sequence, allowing viewers to see how the collective body of portraits and recent landscapes create an unparalleled historical representation of various communities in the United States. Leading curators and critics—Sarah Lewis, Deborah Willis, David Travis, Hilton Als, Jacqueline Terrassa, Rebecca Walker, Maurice Berger, and Leigh Raiford—introduce each series of images.
Revealing Bey as the natural heir of such renowned photographers as Roy DeCarava, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, and James Van Der Zee, Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply demonstrates how one man’s search for community can produce a stunning portrait of our common humanity.

Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply

University of Texas Press

Dave Jordano returned to his hometown of Detroit to document the people who still live in what has become one of the country's most economically challenging cities. Against a backdrop of mass abandonment through years of white flight, unemployment hovering at almost three times the national average, city services cut to the bone, a real estate collapse of massive proportions, and ultimately filing the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, Jordano searches for the hope and perseverance of those who have had to endure the hardship of living in a post-industrial city that has fallen on the hardest of times. From the lower Southeast Side where urban renewal and government programs slowly became the benchmark of civic failure, to the dwindling enclaves of neighborhoods like Delray and Poletown (once blue-collar neighborhoods that have all but vanished), Jordano seeks to dispel the popular myth perpetrated through the media that Detroit is an empty wasteland devoid of people. He encounters resolute individuals determined to make this city a place to live, from a homeless man who decided to build his own one-room structure on an abandoned industrial lot because he was tired of sleeping on public benches, to a group of squatters who repurposed long-abandoned houses on a street called Goldengate. Jordano discovers and rebroadcasts a message of hope and endurance to an otherwise greatly misunderstood and misrepresented city. Detroit: Unbroken Down is not a document solely about what's been destroyed, but even more critically, about all that has been left behind and those who remain to cope with it.

Detroit: Unbroken Down

Zukin, Sharon

Jordano, Dave

Barr, Nancy Watson

powerHouse Books

In The Photography Workshop Series, Aperture Foundation works with the world’s top photographers to distill their creative approaches, teachings, and insights on photography―offering the workshop experience in a book. Our goal is to inspire photographers of all levels who wish to improve their work, as well as readers interested in deepening their understanding of the art of photography. In this book, Dawoud Bey―well-known for his striking portraits that reflect both the individual and their larger community―offers his insight on creating meaningful and beautiful portraits that capture the subject and speak to something more universal. Through images and words, he shares his own creative process and discusses a wide range of issues, from lighting and location to establishing relationships with subjects, and practical strategies for starting a larger portraiture project.

Dawoud Bey on Photographing People and Communities: The Photography Workshop Series

Aperture

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Books by Bey, Dawoud