Museum of Contemporary Photography hosted a program entitled “Conversations on Collaboration in Photography”. This project, 15 years in the making, is the result to the hard work of photographic practitioners, educators and scholars to look at the history of photography and where we are today, acknowledging the collaborative aspect of the medium.

Viewers of the exhibition are asked to think beyond a one-sided understand that the photographer is the sole author and maker of a photograph when it involves the participation or stories of others. 

In this conversation, renowned American photographer and educator, Dawoud Bey, sits down with Leigh Raiford, professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley to discuss his journey of nearly 50 years of capturing stories through photography.

Images discussed in this conversation include:

 

Dawoud Bey, A Man in a Bowler Hat, from the Harlem, USA portfolio, 1976

 

Dawoud Bey, A Woman Waiting In The Doorway, from the Harlem, USA portfolio, 1976

 

Dawoud Bey, Untitled #7 (Branches and Woods), from Night Coming Tenderly, Black, 2017

 

For more information on Dawoud Bey’s work in the MoCP collection, please visit this link.