“Black people have been killed for directing their gaze at the wrong person,” Dawoud Bey once said. “I want my subjects to reclaim their right to look, to see, to be seen.” Reclaiming these rights, Bey takes photographs, his work serving as testimony to the hardships of both history and recent times. This retrospective traces Bey’s career, which has spanned a crucial four decades. —E.C.

Dawoud Bey: An American Project
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 3rd St, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA
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