“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 Monique, as seen here, whom he photographed in 1994.