Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures
Emory Visual Arts Gallery
February 4-March 4, 2010

Opening reception: Thursday, February 4, 5-8 pm
Featuring…
~Food and Libations
~At 5:30 pm, a special presentation by the Transforming Community Project introducing Dawoud Bey’s Spring 2010 Artist Residency at Emory University*
~At 7:00 pm, an artist’s talk by Dawoud Bey

In images made in public and private high schools across the United States, renowned portraitist Dawoud Bey offers a cross section of a generation, which is also a microcosm of the American experience as it finds expression in and as adolescent preoccupations, dreams and intensities. Accompanying each photograph is a statement by its subject, interrogating, challenging and elaborating the image—effectively performing the first in a chain of readings (including our own) that catalyze the portrait’s meanings. The subjects’ receptivity to themselves—following Bey’s own sympathetic receptivity to them—solicits, directs and finally compels our own humanistic response.

*Class Pictures is presented in conjunction with a month-long residency by Dawoud Bey, during which he will work with the Transforming Community Project (TCP) to photograph students, faculty and staff, gather their written and oral testimonies, and conduct workshops that explore the racial history and diversity of Emory University. This residency celebrates TCP’s extraordinary five-year service to the Emory community (2005-2010) and seeks to contribute to their enduring legacy on campus.

Class Pictures and Dawoud Bey’s residency are sponsored by Emory University’s Transforming Community Project, the Hightower Fund, and the Emory College Center for Creativity & Arts.