Braxton McKinney and Lavon Thomas
Dawoud Bey, American, born 1953
2014
Carbon pigment print on 308 gsm Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Paper
Edition of twenty numbered copies, plus five artist proofs
Image: 16 1/4 × 25 5/16 in. (41.2 × 64.3 cm)
Sheet: 20 × 30 in. (50.8 × 76.2 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Evelyn A. and William B. Jaffe 2015 Fund, the Virginia and Preston T. Kelsey 1958 Fund, and the Elizabeth and David C. Lowenstein '67 Fund
© Dawoud Bey
2025.24.1.6
Portfolio / Series Title
Birmingham: Four Girls, Two Boys
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
21st century
Object Name
Photograph
Research Area
Photograph
American History
On view
Label
This set of portraits is meant to evoke one of the children whose life was taken in the racial violence that erupted after the 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The two portraits in each diptych of different people together commemorate a murdered child. One person is the age the dead boy should have been in 2014 (when the photo was taken); the other person is the age of the boy when he was killed in the service of White supremacy. Produced fifty years after their deaths, these photographs commemorate Johnny Robinson (age sixteen) and Virgil Ware (age thirteen), who were killed in the racial disquiet that followed the act of terrorism.
From the 2026 exhibition Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, curated by Amelia Kahl (Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming) and Alisa Swindell (Associate Curator of Photography)
Exhibition History
Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, Jaffe and Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 20, 2025 - July 11, 2026.
Provenance
Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, September, 2014; sold to present collection, 2025.
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