Don Sledge and Moses Austin 2012

Dawoud Bey made these photographic diptychs to explore how history and memory play out on the body, on the face. He pairs a contemporary portrait with one of a historical figure, here, Don Sledge and Moses Austin. The black and white tones lend the photographs a solemn, timeless quality. Look closely at the way Bey uses light and shadow to sculpt the faces, drawing out the nuances of expression, the set of the jaw, the furrow of a brow. The background details are soft, creating a shallow depth of field that keeps the focus on the subjects' faces. Consider the gesture of the hands, the way the subjects sit, the lines and details in the background paintings behind each sitter. The goal is not to find a perfect match between the two sitters, but to reflect on the layered relationship between past and present. This work is a bit like Gerhard Richter's blurred photos of the Baader Meinhof group in the way it evokes a sense of history as something just beyond our reach, always in process.