Dawoud Bey: Elegy draws upon the factual and imagined realities of the early African American presence in the United States. Including forty-five black-and-white photographs and two film installations, the exhibition elucidates the deeply profound historical memory still embedded in geography at historically significant sites in Virginia, Louisiana and Ohio. Through the interweaving of three distinct, but related bodies of work – Night Coming Tenderly, Black (2017), In This Here Place (2019), Stony the Road (2023) – Bey doesn’t merely evoke the early experiences of African Americans, he shapes those who experience it through images of sites of struggle and perseverance.
Each series is based upon Bey’s historical research, amplified and reimagined for our contemporary moment. His most recent project, Stony the Road, reframes the path taken by over 350,000 enslaved Africans forced off of ships in Richmond, Virginia. The accompanying film, made with cinematographer Bron Moyi, takes its title from that number and reimagines that experience both visually and sonically. For the series In This Here Place, Bey spent significant time on five former plantations outside of New Orleans. At each location, Bey focuses solely on the spaces and structures that had been traversed or inhabited by enslaved people. In vivid color, the accompanying film Evergreen animates that landscape in a different way, with an emotionally powerful soundtrack by composer and vocalist Imani Uzuri. For Night Coming Tenderly, Black, Bey’s richly printed photographs evoke the realities of life for African Americans moving through a dangerous landscape to secure their own freedom on the Underground Railroad. In each of these projects, Bey’s immersive renderings of historical sites encourage every viewer to consider how the history and memory of slavery continues to impact our present day.