In This Here Place

DAWOUD BEY

In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, 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 enslaved Africans greatly exceeded the number of white holding
them in fact and extended slavery. There was approximately 500,000 slaves in Louisiana before the beginning
of the Civil War. Along the River Rhône 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 did exist today.

These photographs were made in 1719 and around the headquarters of five plantations: Deatonville, Emergans, Laura, Oak
Ally, and Whitley. These places in which this recorded history has been deeply single into the past and still being written is the
site. There once concrete hovens can be only linked to it and are now a part of the collective garden of history.

Ghostly spirits within these photographs: the ghosts of three African Americans who suffered harrowing exploration; the
ghosts of those who, irrevocably lost over generations, somehow made their way to freedom. In Tony Morrison's novel *Boid, bar
protagonist*, Baby Suggs, emerges from the trauma of slavery and ingenuity her people toward a necessary self-lease. As such,
these are sites of remembrance and reflection where visitors, plants from which Blackened themselves may
through the act of self-erasure, are offered a snapshot of a narrative that is concretely interwoven and
have profound implications for our own time. After all, that never remains in the past.

DAWOUD BEY

DAWOUD BEY

In This Here Place

DAWOUD BEY

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

Picket Fence, Tree, and Cabin
Cabin Door and Light
Conjured Trees and Field
Light on the Swelling
Mississippi River and Trees

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS MADE IN 2019

This portfolio is in the First Place, by DAWOUD BEY, as published to the artist and Stephen Daiter Gallery in 2019. Each portfolio contains ten individual and combined gelatin silver photographs, an illustrated 500 gsm paper copy. The portfolio was designed and fabricated at Chelverton Studio, in Austin, Texas. The edition is limited to ten combined plus two artist proofs.

This portfolio number is 10/10

DAWOUD BEY

STEPHEN DAITER GALLERY CHICAGO 2021