Dawoud Bey: An American Project
Apr 17–Oct 3, 2021
Harlem Redux
7
In 2014, Bey began the series of which this work is a part, Harlem Redux. It marked a return to the neighborhood, where four decades earlier he had made his first critically acclaimed body of work, Harlem, U.S.A. If the earlier series is a love letter to the historic epicenter of Black community and culture in the United States, Harlem Redux (2014–17) is an incisive and elegiac look at its recent, rapid transformation and gentrification. Bey used a medium-format camera and made the pictures large scale and in color, techniques common to contemporary photography practices, in order to signal that these changes are taking place now, and not in a historical moment.
This series commemorates sites of cultural significance in Harlem—such as the legendary jazz club the Lenox Lounge, which was demolished not long after Bey’s photograph was made—and makes evident the impacts of otherwise invisible socioeconomic forces. In his words, Harlem is now a neighborhood “increasingly defined by a sense of ‘erase and replace,’ wherein pieces of social and cultural history, along with memory itself, are routinely discarded.”
-
Dawoud Bey, Girls, Ornaments, and Vacant Lot, NY, from Harlem Redux, 2016. Pigmented inkjet print (printed 2019), 40 3/8 × 48 1/4 × 2 in. (102.6 × 122.6 × 5.1 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York; Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco. © Dawoud Bey
-
Dawoud Bey, Tourists, Abyssinian Baptist Church, NY, from Harlem Redux, 2016. Pigmented inkjet print (printed 2019), 40 3/8 × 48 1/4 × 2 in. (102.6 × 122.6 × 5.1 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York; Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco. © Dawoud Bey
-
Dawoud Bey, Two Men Walking, Harlem, NY, from Harlem Redux, 2014. Pigmented inkjet print (printed 2019), 40 3/8 × 48 1/4 × 2 in. (102.6 × 122.6 × 5.1 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York; Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco. © Dawoud Bey
-
Dawoud Bey, West 124th Street and Lenox Avenue, NY, from Harlem Redux, 2016. Pigmented inkjet print (printed 2019), 40 3/8 × 48 1/4 × 2 in. overall (102.6 × 122.6 × 5.1 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York; Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco. © Dawoud Bey
-
Dawoud Bey, Young Man, West 127th Street, Harlem, NY, from Harlem Redux, 2015. Pigmented inkjet print (printed 2019), 40 3/8 × 48 1/4 × 2 in. (102.6 × 122.6 × 5.1 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York; Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco. © Dawoud Bey