On View
Not on viewObject number2018.22.1
Untitled #1 (Picket Fence and Farmhouse) from the series Night Coming Tenderly, Black
Artist
Dawoud Bey
(American, 1953-)
Date2018
Mediumgelatin silver print
Dimensionsframe: 26 5/8 × 30 5/8 × 1 1/2 in. (67.6 × 77.8 × 3.8 cm)
sheet: 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 61 cm)
image: 17 1/2 × 21 3/4 in. (44.5 × 55.2 cm)
sheet: 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 61 cm)
image: 17 1/2 × 21 3/4 in. (44.5 × 55.2 cm)
Credit LineElisabeth Claire Lahti Fund
Exhibition History"The Way Forward: New Acquisitions at the KIA," July 28 - December 2, 2018.
"Resilience: African American Artists as Agents of Change," at the KIA (September 14, 2019 - February 16, 2020)
"Framing Moments: Photography from KIA's Permanent Collection," KIA (Feb. 6 - May 16, 2021)Label TextKnown for his portrait photography, Dawoud Bey has spent the last 40 years offering space for Black subjects to present themselves affirmatively to the camera and the world. In these groundbreaking photographs, the artist explores entirely new terrain in the form of landscape photography. In Bey’s Night Coming Tenderly, Black series, Underground Railroad waypoints and safe houses visualize the pre-Civil War mood of heightened fear and anxiety.
Bey’s large-scale, darkly lit, nighttime landscapes are meant to communicate the disorientation, fear, and danger that escaping slaves experienced. Shrouded in uncertainty, the dark and almost unintelligible photographs are meant to place viewers within the physical, mental, and emotional state of someone desperately
in search of refuge and respite. In this particular image from the series, Bey’s camera focuses on the farmhouse, its fence, and surroundings presenting them as symbols of hope, a safe haven that will ultimately lead to freedom.
[Framing Moments Exhibition, 2021]
