Update: Please see the recent link for Time Magazine: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1698621,00.html

CLASS PICTURES

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAWOUD BEY


Opening Reception: Thursday, January 10, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001
Tel: (212) 505-5555

Exhibition on View: Friday, January 10–Thursday, February 28, 2008

" I think what has been driving and directing my work for a long time
is the idea that through making pictures I can affect viewers in such
a way that they too will become invested in the ideas and people that
I am invested in. ”

—Dawoud Bey

Dawoud Bey’s teenage subjects defy stereotypes of American youth
during this complicated age. For Class Pictures, Bey photographed
young people from all parts of the economic, racial, and ethnic
spectrum in both public and private high schools in Detroit; Lawrence
and Andover, Massachusetts; Orlando; San Francisco; and New York
City. Bey spent three to four weeks in each school, making formal
portraits of individual students, each made in a classroom or other
school setting during one forty-five-minute period. The resulting
portraits—forty-by-thirty-inch color prints—are arresting both
compositionally and psychologically. At the start of the sitting,
each subject writes a brief autobiographical statement. By turns
poignant, funny, or harrowing, invariably deepening our appreciation
for young adults facing the challenges of the twenty-first century,
these revealing words are an integral part of the project.  Together,
the words and images in Class Pictures offer unusually respectful and
perceptive portraits that establish Dawoud Bey as one of the best
portraitists at work today.

Dawoud Bey (born 1953, New York) 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 has
received several awards, including grants from the National Endowment
for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is represented by Rhona
Hoffman Gallery, Chicago and Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston.

The photographs in the accompanying exhibition are chromogenic prints
made by Duggal, New York. Class Pictures was organized by Aperture
Foundation. This project was made possible, in part, with generous
support from Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro. Additional support was
provided by Sandra and Jack Guthman, Scott and Willa Lang, Susan and
Lewis Manilow, and Madeline Murphy Rabb.