Laneisha II
Artist
Dawoud Bey
(b. 1953)
Date1996
MediumPolacolor ER prints
Dimensionssix panels, each 29 1/2 x 22 in.
overall 90 x 45 3/4 in.
overall 90 x 45 3/4 in.
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineMembers Purchase Fund
Terms
Object number2000.34
Description"Laneisha II"Since 1991 Bey has been using a large-format camera to make studio portraits of teenage students. This camera-one of five in the world-is a 20 by 24-inch Polaroid that stands five feet tall and weighs 235 pounds.
Bey photographed Laneisha when he was an artist-in-residence at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Invited by Andrea Miller-Keller, then the Atheneum's contemporary art curator, and Deirdre Bibby, Amistad Foundation director and the Atheneum's curator of African American Art, Bey spent six weeks working with a group of teenagers from Hartford's Artists Collective Summer Youth Employment Program.(1)
Collaboration was an important part of Bey's project. The Hartford residency was divided into four phases during which the photographer and the students worked together to make the resulting portraits; to discuss issues surrounding representation, image, and stereotype; to examine portrait photography and how it can be used to challenge preconceptions; and to report on their experiences. One of Bey's objectives is to create a relationship between the photographer and the subject, between the viewer and the subject, and, ultimately between the photographer and the viewer. Bey uses the implied neutrality of the studio portrait to allow his subjects to present themselves in their own clothing and without studio props or an urban backdrop, for example. Bey's subjects are individuals presented and represented on their own terms.
Of course, no photograph is entirely neutral. Interested in counteracting stereotypical images of African Americans, Bey uses monumental size to grant an importance and presence to his subjects-in this case, an urban African American teenager in the late twentieth century-and to engage the viewer. This iconic approach is enhanced through the use of rich saturated colors, resulting in a beautiful image. The subtle shades and hues of the warm background of Laneisha play against the vivid blue of the sitter's clothing. To create the final portrait, Bey uses separate photographs of his sitter-in the case of "Laneisha", six-that he combined in order to suggest complexity of his subject. While the photographs featuring Laneisha's body appear to be closely matched, the two of her face, split nearly down the center, offer two different views-two different moments in Laneisha's life-suggesting that she is multifaceted and that these multiple sides are not accessible to the viewer at any one time. Bey has commented, "People who don't frequent museums and galleries need to be given a reason to do so. The most obvious way this can be done is to have something in the museum that speaks to their experience."(2) Making portraits of Hartford area youths was a way to engage students like Laneisha with the museum and with the process of making art.
Bey's Hartford portraits differ from his previous work in at least one important aspect. In his earlier photographs, Bey asked his subjects to look directly at the camera, thus confronting the viewer with his or her individuality. In the Hartford series, Bey's subjects, like Laneisha, are more introspective. They seem preoccupied with something outside the camera frame or with their own thoughts. Laneisha turns slightly in her chair to see something to our left and her right. She is almost avoiding our gaze, a notion reinforced perhaps by the self-conscious manner in which she crosses her arms in her lap. As Bey told a newspaper reporter, "While I was working with these kids, I became more concerned with creating more private space in the images, which results in more complexity. The photographs become more about the subjects confronting themselves than the viewer."(3) AE
Bibliography
Department of Contemporary Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, curatorial file; Max Kozloff and Greg Tate, "Dawoud Bey/Recent Photographs", exhib. cat. (New York: Ledel Gallery, 1990); Dawoud Bey, "The Unflinching Gaze," "Chronicle of Higher Education" (January 5, 1994), p. B104; Dawoud Bey, "Dawoud Bey: Portraits", 1975-1995, exhib. cat. (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1995); Andrea Miller-Keller, "Dawoud Bey: Hartford Portraits '96", in "Dawoud Bey/MATRIX 312" (Hartford: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 1997); Victoria A-T. Sancho, "Respect and Representation: Dawoud Bey's Portraits of Individual Identity," "Third Text 44" (autumn 1998), P. 55-68; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Dawoud Bey, exhib. cat. (Queens, N.Y.: Queens Museum of Art, 1998); Maxwell Lincoln Anderson, ed., "Whitney Biennial: 2000 Exhibition", exhib. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2000), pp. 62?63; Deborah Willis and Robin D. G. Kelley, "Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present" (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000), pp. x, 190-91, 265, 280.
Notes:
1. Miller-Keller, "Dawoud Bey, unpag.
2. Quoted in Jock Reynolds, "An Interview with Dawoud Bey," in Walker Art Center, "Dawoud Bey", p.109.
3. Quoted in Kathy O'Connell, "Walk Softly and Carry a Big Camera; Dawoud Bey's Powerful Photographs Capture the Reality of City Teens at Antheneum", "Hartford Advocate", January 9-16, 1997, p.17.
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