Dawoud Bey - Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation New York Thursday, April 4, 2024 | Phillips

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  • “My interest in young people has to do with the fact that they are the arbiters of style in the community; their appearance speaks most strongly of how a community of people defines themselves at a particular historical moment.”
    Dawoud Bey

    Intertwining the conventions of 19th century portraiture with the scale and immediacy of the contemporary Polaroid, Dawoud Bey’s portraits carry an unwavering presence. In 1992, while in residency at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Andover, Bey began photographing adolescents from varying ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Abandoning the handheld 35mm camera that he had thus far been using for his street photography, Bey began working with a 20 x 24 in. Polaroid camera. The large-scale equipment forced him indoors to the controlled environment of a studio and, in doing so, brought about a deeper and prolonged engagement with his subjects.

     

    With each exposure, Bey captured a specific detail of the overall portrait; when assembled together, the result is a multi-panel work underscoring the multi-dimensional nature of his sitters. Over the next 15 years, Bey continued in this vein working with institutions, photographing youth across the country, including Marc and Eric, as seen here, whom he photographed in Chicago in 1994.

    • Provenance

      Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, 1995

    • Exhibited

      Aura of the Photograph: The Image as Object, Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, 7 March - 28 May 2006
      Dawoud Bey: An American Project, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 15 February - 12 October 2020

    • Literature

      University of Texas Press, Seeing Deeply, p. 189

67

Marc & Eric

1994
Polaroid print polyptych.
Each 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm)
Overall 60 x 66 in. (152.4 x 167.6 cm)

Printed title, date, number 2/2 and sequential numbers 1-6 on gallery labels affixed to the reverse of each frame.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$15,000 - 25,000 

Sold for $19,050

Contact Specialist

Caroline Deck
Senior Specialist, Photographs
cdeck@phillips.com

Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation

New York Auction 4 April 2024