Curriculum

“My work as a photographer has always been informed and inspired by a wide range of other expressive forms,” Dawoud Bey says. The artist began his creative life as a drummer, versed in the articulations and improvisations of jazz. Whether percussive or visual, Bey’s work is fine-tuned to the historic and quotidian rhythms of Black life. Since the mid-1970s, he has crafted disarmingly serene portraits and psychologically rich landscapes, moving between the side streets and thoroughfares of Harlem, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, and the dense, unmarked trails of the Underground Railroad. With a meticulous