Stephen Daiter Gallery presents Dawoud Bey: Syracuse 1985, on view through November 28th.
Following his early success with Harlem, U.S.A., Dawoud Bey was invited to participate in his first-ever artist residency in 1985 at Light Work in Syracuse, New York. This one-month residency provided Bey with a place to live and work without interruption—a rarity for a young artist. He spent his days walking the city streets, photographing from sunup to sundown. Dawoud Bey writes :
In the fall of 1985, I began a one-month residency at Light Work, located in Syracuse, New York. At that point, I had never done a residency of any kind, though I had been exhibiting for several years. I had attended the School of Visual Arts for two years, dropping out and forfeiting my scholarship to undertake the Harlem, U.S.A. project. I did so as an artist in the Cultural Foundation CETA Artists Project, a federal make-work program whose guidelines had been tweaked to include artists among the workforce. My exhibition Harlem, U.S.A. took place at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. It was followed by a show at the Cinque Gallery, a non-profit space founded by artists Romare Bearden, Ernie Crichlow, and Norman Lewis to showcase the work of emerging artists of color.
Light Work paid a decent stipend and provided an apartment. Having continuous access to a darkroom and the freedom to go out every day to make work was a completely new experience for me. I seized the opportunity, photographing from sunup to sundown, seven days a week. I moved between locations, starting in a low-rise housing project in the Black community on Syracuse’s South Side and continuing into the downtown area. I walked up and down South Salina Street and the surrounding cross streets, stepped in and out of local establishments, mingled with people waiting for buses, crossed the street to follow the shifting light, and kept photographing the entire time.
That was the single most productive month of my then-young career. I was able to photograph, develop the film, make contact sheets and prints, and then head back out into the streets uninterrupted. A few months after the conclusion of the residency, one photograph from the work I had made was published in Light Work’s Contact Sheet, then a simple 11×17-inch sheet folded in half. They clearly had a very good mailing list, because a short time after it was sent out, the photography curator from the Fogg Art Museum contacted director Jeffrey Hoone, asking how to get in touch with me to see more work. That led to my inclusion in the New American Photographs exhibition at the Fogg and on to the next stage of my career.
Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey : Syracuse 1985
Until November 28, 2025
Stephen Daiter Gallery
230 W Superior St #400
Chicago, IL 60654
www.stephendaitergallery.com
