Dawoud Bey on Photographing People and Communities

In the fifth installment of The Photography Workshop Series, Dawoud Bey—well known for striking portraits that reflect both the individual and their larger community—offers his insight on creating meaningful and beautiful portraits that capture the subject and speak to something more universal.

Aperture Foundation works with the world’s top photographers to distill their creative approaches to, teachings on, and insights into photography—offering the workshop experience in a book. Our goal is to inspire photographers at all levels who wish to improve their work, as well as readers interested in deepening their understanding of the art of photography. Through images and words, he shares his own creative process and discusses a wide range of issues, from lighting and location to establishing relationships with subjects, and practical strategies for starting a larger portraiture project.

Dawoud Bey (born in New York, 1953) has for decades made groundbreaking and evocative work about the histories of Black communities. His numerous honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. A major career retrospective of his work, An American Project, was co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2020–22). Bey holds a master of fine arts degree from Yale University School of Art and is currently professor of art and a former Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago, where he has taught since 1998. His books include Class Pictures (Aperture, 2007), Seeing Deeply (2018), Dawoud Bey on Photographing People and Communities (Aperture, 2019), and Street Portraits (2021).