Kenwanna 1996

Dawoud Bey made "Kenwanna" with photographic materials in an undated year. There's something about the way Bey divides this portrait into four sections that makes me think about process. Like the way an image is built up, layer by layer. Notice how the light shifts across each of the four frames, creating a subtle change in color and tone, a quiet transformation in each panel. The texture of the image is smooth, but you can sense the grain of the film, the materiality of the photograph itself. The top right corner where Kenwanna is resting her face on her hand is really beautiful, the soft light catching the rings on her fingers and the deep shadows around her eyes. It feels so intimate and immediate, like we are really there with her. Bey’s work feels like it’s in conversation with artists like Carrie Mae Weems, who also use photography to explore identity, history, and representation. Art isn’t just about what we see, but how we see, and who gets to do the seeing.