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Portfolio of photographs acquired from Dawoud Bey’s Night Coming Tenderly, Black

February 22, 2021 - Jessica S. McDonald

In 2017, renowned portraitist Dawoud Bey (American, b. 1953) reflected on his four-decade career by stating simply, “my work has largely been based on representation of the human subject.” He explained that he has used photography to depict “subjects such as the black subject, or young people, who are not always—within the larger social conversation—thought of as having a rich interior life.” In addition to these poetic portraits of ordinary people, Bey has recently begun confronting central events in African American history, asking, “what kind of work can one make about something that happened decades ago?”   

This question is vital to Bey’s newest project, Night Coming Tenderly, Black, completed in 2017. Bey has written, “Night Coming Tenderly, Black is a visual reimagining of the movement of fugitive slaves through the Cleveland and Hudson, Ohio landscapes as they approached Lake Erie and the final passage to freedom in Canada. Using both real and imagined sites, these landscape photographs seek to recreate the spatial and sensory experiences of those moving furtively through the darkness.” 

Dawoud Bey (American, b. 1953), Untitled #18 (Creek and House), from the portfolio Night Coming Tenderly, Black, 2018. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 in. Photography Collection, purchase, 2019:0014:0005 © Dawoud Bey. May not be reproduced without permission from the photographer.

Bey’s masterful printing methods work to convey the sensory experience he seeks to recreate. Initially photographing these landscapes by day, Bey printed them in the deep blacks and rich grays of night. The results allow the delicate tonal gradations and fine details to slowly emerge. Bey has described the darkness in these prints as “a metaphor for an enveloping physical darkness, a passage to liberation that was a protective cover for the escaping African American slaves.”  

Using both real and imagined sites, these landscape photographs seek to recreate the spatial and sensory experiences of those moving furtively through the darkness.
—DAWOUD BEY

A portfolio of ten photographs from Night Coming Tenderly, Black, published in 2018, has been acquired by the Harry Ransom Center in partnership with Black Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. This acquisition supports Black Studies’ goal of increasing the University’s collection of primary documents relating to cultures of the African Diaspora, and the Ransom Center’s aims of enriching its photography holdings by acquiring works by historically underrepresented artists. 

This article appeared in the print edition of the Ransom Center Magazine (Spring 2020).

Filed Under: Acquisitions, Featured1, Photography Tagged With: African American Creators, Dawoud Bey

The Ransom Center and NAGPRA: A team effort in research

February 18, 2021 - Harry Ransom Center

by ESTER HARRISON
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation.  [Read more…] about The Ransom Center and NAGPRA: A team effort in research

Filed Under: archive, Art, Featured1, Research + Teaching Tagged With: collections, RansomResearch

ABOUT ESTER HARRISON

Ester Harrison is the Registrar for Art Loans and Exhibitions at the Harry Ransom Center, where she has served on several committees, including those tasked with renovation planning, deaccessioning, NAGPRA compliance, and updating procedures into modern standards and practices of collections and exhibits stewardship. She has a master’s degree in Anthropology and Museum studies from UW-Milwaukee, where she assisted with the NAGPRA initiative at the Milwaukee Public Museum, and continues to serve as an AAM-Museum Assessment Program Peer Reviewer where she has consults to smaller art museums in their efforts to attain national accreditation. She has worked as registrar for more than 700 exhibitions.

Jean Malaquais and the life of a novel

February 8, 2021 - Harry Ransom Center

by JULIA ELSKY
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation. [Read more…] about Jean Malaquais and the life of a novel

Filed Under: archive, Books + Manuscripts, Featured1, Research + Teaching Tagged With: Jean Malaquais, What is Research?

ABOUT JULIA ELSKY

Julia Elsky is Assistant Professor of French at Loyola University Chicago. A chapter of her book, Writing Occupation: Jewish Émigré Voices in Wartime France (Stanford University Press, 2020), focuses on Jean Malaquais and is based on her research at the Harry Ransom Center.

The women who made Selznick’s screenplays

February 5, 2021 - Harry Ransom Center

by ERIN MCGUIRL
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation. [Read more…] about The women who made Selznick’s screenplays

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Featured1, Film, Research + Teaching Tagged With: David O. Selznick archive, What is Research?

ABOUT ERIN MCGUIRL

Erin McGuirl is the Executive Director of the Bibliographical Society of America. Her background is in librarianship, and since 2008 she has worked with library and private collections of rare materials in New York City and elsewhere. Her writing has appeared in Printing History, Atlas Obscura, the blog for the Journal of the History of Ideas, and in the forthcoming Information: A Historical Companion (Princeton University Press).

A lost work by Langston Hughes

February 1, 2021 - Steven Hoelscher

Langston Hughes by Carl Van Vechten

In 1933, the Harlem Renaissance star wrote a powerful essay about race, unpublished in English until 2019. [Read more…] about A lost work by Langston Hughes

Filed Under: archive, Authors, Featured1, literature Tagged With: African American Creators, African American History Month, Black History Month, Langston Hughes

TIME TO REST: Rethinking disability and research

January 28, 2021 - Harry Ransom Center

by COYOTE SHOOK
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation. [Read more…] about TIME TO REST: Rethinking disability and research

Filed Under: archive, Featured1, literature, Research + Teaching Tagged With: Disability Studies, What is Research?

ABOUT COYOTE SHOOK
Coyote Shook is a doctoral student in American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin and the education and outreach coordinator for the Radclyffe Hall/ Una Troubridge grant project at the Harry Ransom Center. Their debut graphic novel, Coyote the Beautiful, was the winner of the 2020 Leiby Chapbook Contest with The Florida Review and is set for publication with Burrow Press in March 2021.

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  • Portfolio of photographs acquired from Dawoud Bey’s Night Coming Tenderly, Black
  • The Ransom Center and NAGPRA: A team effort in research
  • Jean Malaquais and the life of a novel
  • The women who made Selznick’s screenplays
  • A lost work by Langston Hughes

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