Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems met in 1976 when they were both twenty-three, in a photography class Bey was teaching at the Studio Museum in Harlem. In the forty-five years following, the two artists have remained close and supportive friends who have consistently created visually resonant and thought-provoking works exploring themes of race, class, representation, and systems of power. Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue brings together 140 photographs and video works, writings by the artists, a historical timeline and two critical essays to illuminate their unique creative visions that have expanded the field of photography.
The design challenge here was to organize the material to celebrate the artists’ connections and complicities, while ensuring their individualism and differences remained clear. The curatored sections themes were organized in small groups by artist, and where they transitioned to the other’s works, that spread celebrated a visual conversation between the two of them. A graphic “clue” was often a solid black background on that spread. The text grid, a two-column format, emphasized the dialogue theme.
It was a thrill to work with these rich photographic images, which were celebrated by the printer’s (Trifolio SRL) expertise with tritone, in tandem with the artists’ guidance in tonality.
Exhibition schedule: Grand Rapids Art Museum— January–May 2022; Tampa Museum of Art—June–October 2022; Seattle Art Museum—November 2022–January 2023; Getty Center—February 2023
Distributed by Delmonico | DAP. 9.75 x 11 in (248 x 280 mm) 176 pages. Paper on board, Garda Matte 170 gsm, tritone and cmyk
