What is the role of artists in helping to process local and national events?

Is there a difference between memorializing a traumatic event and processing it?

How do time and context change the way we think about historical events?

What roles can photography play in documenting lives and events?

How might the style, color palette, and composition affect the mood of a work of art?

How might an artist’s identity and lived experiences shape the content of their work?

How was this image created?

Where do you think you might see an image like this? Could it be a still from a movie? An image in a newspaper? A photograph in someone’s home? An illustration in a textbook?

What do you think the artist is showing us from this perspective? What is the focal point? Why do you think Bey chose to take the photograph from this angle?

What if I told you that this was a photograph about history? Which time period do you think it could be about? This is a contemporary image of a place thought to be a stop of the Underground Railroad. Why was the Underground Railroad an important feature of U.S. History? How does this photograph depict that history?

What is the mood of this photograph? How does this image make you feel? How does sensory information affect mood (for example, I see a porch, I hear the wind shaking the branches of the bush, I feel the mildewed grass)? Why might it have mattered to the artist to portray mood in this work?

How would this photograph change if the picture had been taken on a sunny day? What if the perspective was straight on of the door and porch? How would this have changed the mood of the photograph?

If you could enter this photograph right now, keeping in mind the mood, what do you think you might hear? What song would you assign to this scene? Why?

Bey’s series Night Coming Tenderly, Black was inspired by a poem written by Langston Hughes titled "Dream Variations":

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
The rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
     Dark like me—

That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening …
A tall, slim tree …
Night coming tenderly
     Black like me.

How does hearing the poem while viewing the photograph change the impact of the artwork? How can poetry work in collaboration with art?

How might this photograph relate to current events? Is there a difference between memorializing a traumatic event and processing it? Which do you think this photograph doing? Why?

Grades 6–12

Students should consider and discuss the following prompts:

• How might Dawoud Bey’s identity as a Black man shape the themes and content in his work?
• How might your identity shape the topics that are important to you and the way that you would approach them in your art?