Dawoud Bey - Stony is the Road
By Laura Heyrman
“The reason that I make the work that I do is to provoke a conversation about the past in the present moment.” – Dawoud Bey
In this Viewing Room, I’m sharing some of the photographs from Dawoud Bey’s ongoing series Stony the Road. This is the third series in which Bey (American, b. 1953) explores American landscapes associated with African-American history. The artist had focused on portraiture for much of his career, but in the last decade has shifted his attention to landscape. In 2017, Bey created the series Night Coming Tenderly, Black. Photographed in Ohio, it explored the Underground Railroad and the lands through which enslaved people traveled in search of freedom. Next, in 2019, for In This Here Place, the artist photographed sites associated with enslaved life on plantations in Louisiana.
Commissioned by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), Stony the Road was photographed along the Richmond Slave Trail (also known as Trail of Enslaved Ancestors), a path along which enslaved Africans were led from the waterfront to the auction blocks. In the years since the Civil War, the path has been maintained by the descendants of the enslaved and today it is maintained as a hiking trail and historic site.
“This is ancestor work. Stepping outside the art context, the project context, this is the work of keeping our ancestors present in the contemporary conversation.” – Dawoud Bey
Bey’s three American Landscape series were exhibited together as “Elegy” at the VMFA in late 2023-early 2024; “Elegy” is scheduled to appear at the New Orleans Museum of Art later in 2025. This month Stony the Road is being exhibited at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York City. In addition to the still photographs, this series includes a two-channel video installation of Bey’s film 350,000. The film takes its name from the estimated number of people who traveled the Trail of Enslaved Ancestors and was filmed along the trail.
Stony the Road takes its title the poem Lift Every Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson. The poem became the lyrics of the song often called the Black National Anthem; the second verse says
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered.
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
The photographs are printed in a very large format, about four feet or more tall, so that they envelop the viewer. Bey carefully excluded any hint of the contemporary world from his works, though in reality they intrude on the Trail in many places. In addition, the projection of the film is designed so that everything appears life-sized. All of this is intended to immerse the viewer in the landscape, so that the viewer feels that the camera is their eyes. Thus, viewers have an opportunity to reflect upon this history and remember those who suffered in this place. Of course, this impact isn’t possible looking at reproductions on a small digital screen, but perhaps some of us will be inspired to seek out Bey’s work in person after seeing this slide show.
“The past doesn’t simply stay in the past; it comes with us, right into the present. And there are issues, unresolved issues, embedded in the things that all of these photographs that I’ve made are about.” – Dawoud Bey
“Dawoud Bey – Stony the Road” can be seen at Sean Kelly Gallery, 475 10th Avenue, New York City, through February 22, 2025. LINK: skny.com/exhibitions/dawoud-bey5
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