Shawn Michelle Smith, “Photography, Darkness, and the Underground Railroad: Dawoud Bey’s Night Coming Tenderly, Black,” American Quarterly Vol 73 (1), 2021, 25-52.
-Many dark photos are displayed in an art gallery and those photos consist of landscapes, lakes, shiny leaves, bushes, and weeds. These photos are meant to adjust the human eye to darkness. Despite the light revealing various attributes of a photograph, the different levels of darkness can show what is not normally seen. The artist can hide certain elements and it deepens the analyzer’s curiosity. As shown in history, Sojourner Truth, the Underground Railroad, and Harriet Tubman are on display in one of the photographer’s collections. Each story has a cloud of darkness that looms over them. These dark photographs are meant to resist the stereotype of overexposing and underexposing these tragic situations that slaves encountered. The analyzers are able to see the slaves’ point of view, but not the person itself. The main goal is to preserve their character.
-“Bey’s dark photographs are unwilling to “hold the light” of surveillance and disclosure; they refuse to inscribe black subjects into photography’s “light writing.”
