Birmingham photos close Easter at the National Gallery of Art

Dawoud Bey (b. 1953), Michael-Anthony Allen and George Washington, 2012, 
The Birmingham Project, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The complete photo series may be found at the National Gallery website here. 

When he was just a boy of 11, Dawoud Bey (b.1953) saw a photograph in a book his parents brought home which profoundly affected his life, haunting him, and laying the foundation for his pursuit of photography as a profession.

Now, his works are collected throughout the world and are found at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Barbican Centre in London, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the High Museum of Art, London's National Portrait Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington where an exhibition, the Birmingham Project, by Mr. Bey is displayed through tomorrow.

 

Dawoud Bey (b. 1953) with Betty Selvage and Faith Speights, 2012, The Birmingham Project, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., September 11, 2018/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The life-changing photograph showed a girl near Mr. Bey's age who lay in a hospital bed, her eyes covered with cotton balls, blinded in one eye, her face embedded with glass, caused by the bomb explosion at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963.

The Ku Klux Klan attack on the church took the life of the girl's sister and three other young girls as they got ready to sing at church.

Dawoud Bey at the exhibition, The Birmingham Project, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., September 11, 2018/Photo by Patricia Leslie


The exhibition includes diptychs of photos of four adults who are the ages the children would be today, and four children at ages the victims were in 1963.

Mr. Bey spent seven years on the project which includes a video of two screens which shows scenes in slow motion the girls might have seen from a car on their way to church that Sunday morning, and every day city sights from 1963 in Birmingham. Original music composed by Mr. Bey's son, Ramon Alvarez-Smikle, accompanies the presentation.

Dawoud Bey introducing the exhibition, The Birmingham Project, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., September 11, 2018/Photo by Patricia Leslie


The girls who died were Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Carol Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14).  All but Ms. McNair were born in April, 1949 which would make them 70 years old this month.

Seven hours after the Ku Klux Klan's bomb killed the choristers, two more black youths, Johnny Robinson and Virgil Ware, were shot to death in Birmingham. 


It took the U.S. government 14 years to prosecute the first murderer, and one of the four suspects was never tried.

The photograph of Sarah Collins is included in an 11-minute interview with Mr. Bey which is shown in a nearby gallery and may also be seen here. He says that the Sarah Collins photograph "shook me to the core." In his research, he discovered the two boys' deaths have mostly been overlooked.

The children's deaths outraged the public and helped produce more support for the passage of the Civil Rights Act the next year.

With continuing public exhibitions and education about the tragedy and infinite focus on the lives of innocents taken by intolerant extremists who live among us today, the legacies of six Birmingham children live.

What: Dawoud Bey:  The Birmingham Project

When: Now through tomorrow (Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, 11 a.m.to 6 p.m.). Open on Easter.

Where:  Gallery 22 on the ground floor of the West Building between Third and Ninth streets at Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. On the Mall.

Admission charge: No charge

Metro stations closest to the National Gallery of Art are the Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives and L'Enfant Plaza.

For more information: 202-737-4215
 
patricialesli@gmail.com