For nearly five decades, American photographer Dawoud Bey has explored Black life through portraiture, landscape, and moving image, revealing how history continues to shape the present. This ongoing exploration continues in his upcoming exhibition, Dawoud Bey: Material Histories, Living Landscapes, opening July 24, 2026, at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Presented in partnership with the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art and curated by Allison Glenn, Curator of the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art, the exhibition brings together 23 large-scale works from Bey's recent series, including Night Coming Tenderly, Black (2016-17), In This Here Place (2019), and Stony the Road (2023), alongside 350,000 (2023), a two-channel film from the Rennie Collection reimagining the journey made by enslaved Africans along the Richmond Slave Trail. Installed alongside four African sculptures from the AGO's permanent collection, this site-specific installation traces the historical connections between North America and Africa, emphasizing how landscapes and waterways reveal the histories that have shaped the Black diaspora.
While portraiture has long been central to Bey's practice, this exhibition continues his more recent exploration of landscape as a vessel for memory, asking what the land itself can reveal about histories of enslavement, migration, and survival. Throughout his practice, Bey has demonstrated a remarkable ability to photograph the presence of what cannot be seen. Rather than illustrating historical events directly, he turns to landscapes and the built environment, inviting viewers to consider the experiences embedded within them. In doing so, he reveals how the past remains embedded in contemporary experience.
Bey shares, "I hope that viewers will come to a deeper consideration of history, and realize that history does not stay in the past, it very much informs and shapes the present as well." Dawoud Bey: Material Histories, Living Landscapes carries this sentiment forward, offering viewers an opportunity to reflect on how history continues to live within the landscapes we encounter and the stories we inherit, as well as photography's unique ability to make those connections visible.
