The apartment house on Cambridge Place in Clinton Hill is quintessentially Brooklyn, a stately foundation propping up faded pale brick, with curved bow windows and wrought iron detailing on its fence and front door, seemingly unchanged for years. Its wide stoop has a vantage onto a lively swath of Fulton Street, the destination and origin of much of its foot traffic. From 1978 to 1991, those coming and going included preteens striking a pose in overalls, bookish young boys, young MCs and track stars, little girls in Sunday dress, men and women headed to the cleaner, the barber, the bodega. During those years the artist Dawoud Bey observed this steady flow of everyday Black beauty, occasionally pulling a face out of the crowd to make a picture with his Polaroid Type 55 camera. He photographed in close proximity, usually with very few background details, and printed large, in luminous black and white tones, so that one can look directly into the eyes of Bey's friends and neighbors. The pictures, Hilton Als has written, "conveyed the satisfaction of being seen, which is a form of brotherhood and love, too."
