HOUSTON — A highly anticipated new photo exhibit opened Sunday at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
An American Project is retrospective from famed photographer Dawoud Bey. Since the 1970s, he's focused his lens on people in unseen communities.
"This exhibition, Dawould Bey: An American Project, covers more than four decades of the artist's work," said MFAH's Curator of Photography Malcolm Daniel. "From his very early photographs in Harlem, all the way to his most recent project of photographing on the West Bank of the Mississippi and some of the Louisiana plantations, where history still feels resonant. Where it feels like sacred ground."
The portraits on display range from classic street photography to large-scale studio portraits. Bey hopes the exhibit helps represent America through the lens.
"I hope that they would get a kind of resonant sense of another human being. A momentary engagement with another human being. A momentary sense of intimacy with a stranger," Bey said. "With someone who if they saw them in the street they might not engage with them but through the photograph they have this opportunity to engage with a group of strangers who they don't know, and then hopefully they go back out into the world with that sense of being more connected than disconnected from each other."
The exhibit will feature 90 pieces of Bey's work and runs from March 6 through May 30.
The exhibit is included in general admission, but advanced timed tickets are recommended, which can be purchased through MFAH's website.