In This Here Place

DAWOUD BEY

In this here place, we flesh; flesh that swoops, laughs;
flesh that dances on bare feet in grass.
Love it. Lose it hard.

TONY MORRISON, “RELOVED”

THE FIRST ESLAVED AFRICANS WERE BROUGHT TO FRENCH LOUISIANA IN 1719, A BRUTAL ACT
putting in place the original labor force that would fuel the economy of what would become the United States. The demand for
free labor eventually grew to the point where the numbers of sealed Africans greatly exceeded the number of white holding
them in fact and extended slavery. Then was approximately 500,000 slaves in Louisiana before the beginning
of the Civil War. Along the River Red on the banks of the Mississippi River, there were once 520 plantations. Few of the
remains of the plantations that were the structures of slavery still stand today.

These photographs were made in 1719 and around the headquarters of plantations, Deatonah, Emergens, Laura, Oak
Ally, and Whitley. There are places in which this recorded history has been singlehandedly left and still being heartily in
the air. Those once slave-holding houses can be only linked at and are now a part of the collection's garden of history.

Ghost rats within these photographs: the ghosts of those African Americans who suffered harrowing exploration; the
ghosts of those who, irrevocably lost to general society, somehow made their way to freedom. In Tony Morrison's novel *Boid*, her
protagonist, Baby Suggs, emerges from the trauma of slavery and ingenuity for people toward a self-sustaining life. As such,
these rats are not only the source of information and influence for a number of contemporary, plants from which Black nodes tell themselves
through the act of self-hatred and the creation of a portrait of a person on whom they are not committed; and have profound implications
for our own time. After all, that the past never remains in the past.

DAWOUD BEY

DAWOUD BEY

In This Here Place

DAWOUD BEY

Tree and Gabin
Overgrowth and Fence
Sugarcane I
Field and Tree Undergrowth
Irrigation Ditch

Picket Fence, Tree, and Gabin
Gabin Door and Light
Conjured Trees and Field
Light on the Swining
Mississippi River and Trees

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS MADE IN 2019

This portfolio, In This Here Place, by DAWOUD BEY, was published to the artist and Stephen Daiter Gallery in 2019. Each portfolio contains ten individual and combined gelatin silver photographs, on 11.5 x 13.5 gsm Barytex paper. The portfolio was designed and fabricated at Cleveland Studio, in Austin, Texas. The edition is limited to ten combined plus one artist print.

This portfolio number is 10/10

DAWOUD BEY

STEPHEN DAITER GALLERY CHICAGO 2021