Born David Edward Smikle in New York City's Jamaica, Queens neighborhood, he changed his name to Dawoud Bey in the early 1970s. He studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1977–78, graduated with a BFA in Photography from Empire State College in 1990, and received his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1993. Over the course of his career, Bey has participated in more than 20 artist residencies, which have allowed him to work directly with the adolescent subjects of his most recent work.
Bey’s work is the result of an effort to get away from the act of taking pictures, with all its implications of theft. With Class Pictures, it may be more appropriate to speak of his making or receiving a picture. Even though the subjects get to have their say, they, like all of us, fail to express themselves fully or finally, in writing or in pose. The construction of the self is an ongoing process, and these portraits inevitably remain mere fragments. Their fragmentary nature is precisely what makes them so credible. Bey quietly presents his photographic subjects with empathy and without reducing their complexity—something rarely achieved with images of teenagers, who are so often both looked at and overlooked."
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