“One day, right, me and my cousins, we was riding in the car. We had pulled over to go over this girl’s house, and we was sitting on the car and the police pulled up on us and they told us to get on the car or whatever, right, so we get on the car and everything. So further and further along they started asking us questions, and its really make me mad because they’re asking you questions but they’re trying to see, like, if you’re goin’ say something dumb. But you’re not really saying nothin’ dumb, but they’re expecting you to be dumb but you don’t feel you are dumb. So that’s frustrating because if somebody think you’re dumb, and you know you’re not dumb, you’re gonna want to tell them, but the police, if you try to. . . you know what I’m saying. . . get out of line with them, they hit you or somethin’, so really I kept my mouth shut.”
—Christopher
Dawoud Bey’s series Class Pictures started from a sequence of portraits the artist captured during his 1992 residency at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Andover. Over the next 15 years Bey took portraits of high-school students across the United-States aiming to collect the diverse faces of a generation from different backgrounds. Each sitting took 45 minutes and began with the subject writing a brief autobiography before posing in front of the photographer’s camera. Bey only read their personal statement after the session and this text appeared alongside each portrait in the published book.
Regarding this series, Bey said that he wished 'to create a compelling and significant contemporary portrait of American youth in its various social and human dimensions. I believe that such a group of photographs-with the attendant texts-will constitute a significant record and examination of our time... Rather than viewing young people through a lens of social problematics that generalizes the individual, I intend to make a rich and complex description of these subjects.'
