For the past fifteen years, Dawoud Bey has been making striking, large-scale color portraits of students at high schools across the United States. Depicting teenagers from a wide economic, social, and ethnic spectrum—and intensely attentive to their poses and gestures—he has created a highly diverse group portrait of a generation that intentionally challenges teenage stereotypes.

Bey spends two to three weeks in each school, taking formal portraits of individual students, each made in a classroom during one forty-five-minute period. At the start of the sitting, each subject writes a brief autobiographical statement. By turns poignant, funny, or harrowing, these revealing words are an integral part of the project, and the subject's statement accompanies each photograph in the book. Together, the words and images in Class Pictures offer unusually respectful and perceptive portraits that establish Bey as one of the best portraitists at work today.

This project was made possible, in part, with generous support from Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro. Additional support was provided by Sandra and Jack Guthman, Scott and Willa Lang, Susan and Lewis Manilow, and Madeline Murphy Rabb.

>View "Dawoud Bey's Interest in Photography and Portraiture"

>View "Dawoud Bey's Class Pictures: The Process"

>View "Dawoud Bey's Class Pictures: Response from the Teenagers"