By Kathleen Reid
Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, secured the celebrated photographer Dawoud Bey to create Stony the Road, a series of photographs commissioned by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in preparation for the upcoming exhibition Dawoud Bey: Elegy.
To commission any work of art, Valerie explains, involves trust in the artist’s demonstrated talent and an ability to complete the work by performing at a high level. Having seen Bey’s 2017 series Night Coming Tenderly, Black, Valerie admired Bey’s large-scale photographs focused solely on landscapes and in this instance, illuminating the Underground Railroad and the journey from enslavement to self-liberation. For the VMFA commission, she wanted to focus on the beginning of this narrative with Richmond’s Historic Slave Trail and particularly Manchester Docks, which was at the epicenter of the domestic slave trade between 1830 and 1860. Valerie says, “It’s not about creating a literal description. Dawoud’s work has to do with transporting people into this landscape and through time to evoke what it was really like for the 350,000 men, women and children who walked the trail into enslavement.”
Bey, who lives in Chicago, is best known for his compelling and intimate portraits that connect people with the communities he photographs. Valerie and Dawoud met in 1998 when she was at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They have remained friends and colleagues. Bey’s career has been lauded garnering him major accolades and national fame for his work including the McArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship in 2017. As a child, Bey suffered hearing loss which he credits with giving him a heightened sensory vision with his eyes through the camera lens. He has said, “The camera for me became a way of having a voice in the world.”
When she brought Bey to Richmond to view the Historic Slave Trail in 2018, Valerie was aware that Bey had already begun a new series of photographs on plantations located along the Mississippi River in Louisiana. Valerie says it simply clicked that this was a trilogy and needed to be presented as a poetic framing of the early experience of being an African American in this country. “We wanted to give his narrative a beginning, an anchor that begins here in Richmond along the slave trail. The Commonwealth is where slavery begins and enslavement becomes codified in the American landscape.” When he photographed the landscape series about the Underground Railroad, Dawoud created beautiful images that were also very haunting; they were photographs devoid of people, reminiscent of the work of photographer Roy DeCarava, who was known for his dark-on-dark printed tones. Her vision was to explain the arc of the early African American’s journey with this commission. Much to Valerie’s delight, Dawoud was intrigued and deeply moved by this historic and sacred site, and he readily accepted the commission.
“I don’t hover around an artist as they are creating work,” says Valerie who maintained her distance during the artist’s process. Dawoud did extensive research, coming to Richmond many times to photograph the trail in different seasons. Only one person watched him work—VMFA photographer Sandra Sellars, who documented his creative process. Valerie asks, “How does one capture the history and psychic legacies of this landscape?”
Stony the Road, which took over a year to complete, will be accompanied by a short film 350,000, a number that evokes the 350,000+ men, women, and children sold from Richmond’s auction blocks at Manchester Docks between 1830 and 1860. Bey worked with Dr. Gaynell Sherrod, associate professor of dance and choreography at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), to complete the soundtrack.
“Complex projects like this require a great deal of support to bring to life,” Valerie notes. “We are thankful to the National Endowment for the Arts and other sponsors for funding that will assist in the mounting of this exhibition.” VMFA is also producing a catalogue which will be co-published with Aperture Foundation. “We are very fortunate that Aperture was open to our printing the catalogue here in the Commonwealth,” she adds. “We’ve also received funding for a symposium in January 2024 from the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Community Foundation for a greater Richmond.”
Thanks to Dawoud Bey’s outstanding work, VMFA is illuminating the Commonwealth’s history and opening a new conversation about Richmond’s Historic Slave Trail. We are delighted to share that this powerful series of photographs will be on display beginning November 18.
For more information on Dawoud Bey, this 6-minute segment from PBS Newshour speaks to his recent work, including some that will be on view at VMFA as part of Dawoud Bey: Elegy.