The Photography of Dawoud Bey
The work of Chicago photographer Dawoud Bey is mesmerizing. Click this and see.
Even though we have the same last name, Dawoud and I are not related. But here's how we met.:
For years I'd run into people who'd ask if we were brothers. Then in 2003, while I was taking pictures in Grant Park in front of Columbia College a woman asked me if I still taught there. I actually did teach journalism at Columbia once, so I told her 'No, I stopped a few years ago."
"I heard you were still teaching," she said.
"I wish I could, but I can't find the time," I said.
"I love your photography," she said. Then it hit me: She thinks I'm Dawoud, who does teach at Columbia College.
Then she said, "How's your brother?"
"You might have me mistaken for someone else," I said. "I don't have a brother." "
"Yes you do," she said. "And I heard y'all wasn't getting along."
"I don't have a brother," I said laughing.
"Yeah, alright then," she said. She did not believe.
I knew Dawoud's brother, Ken. And they do get along. So I ran into Ken a few weeks later and told him the story and he cracked up laughing. "You should give him a call," he said of Dawoud. He gave me the number and I left him a message: "Brother Bey. This is your long lost brother, Lee, reaching out for you." He called me back a few minutes later, laughing. We hooked up for lunch and that was that.
