In this room, photographers Roy DeCarava and Dawoud Bey address histories of Blackness, visibility and invisibility.
Bey’s series Night Coming Tenderly, Black 2017 explores real and imagined sites along the historical Underground Railroad in the US – a secret network of routes travelled by enslaved people fleeing north to seek freedom. In the prints, Bey pays homage to DeCarava, foregrounding what his predecessor called ‘a world shaped by Blackness’.
Both photographers have coaxed incredible nuance and expression out of darkness. DeCarava’s impeccable dark room skills and printing techniques result in images of the darkest tones, which encourage viewers to slow down to look. He inspired Bey to create metaphorical images of darkness, representing the vulnerability and hope encountered by those fleeing slavery. Bey has described his aim of ‘holding darkness itself in a tender embrace’, much like DeCarava decades before.