Cabin Door and Light
Dawoud Bey, American, born 1953
2021
Gelatin silver print on Ilford 255 gsm Baryta paper
3/10 (+2 AP)
Image: 17 5/8 × 21 15/16 in. (44.8 × 55.8 cm)
Sheet: 19 3/4 × 23 13/16 in. (50.2 × 60.5 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
2025.24.3.7
Portfolio / Series Title
In This Here Place
Geography
Place Imaged: United States, North America
Period
21st century
Object Name
Photograph
Research Area
Photograph
American History
Not on view
Inscriptions
Numbered, on reverse, lower left, in graphite; 3 / 10
Label
This photograph was taken along the River Road in Louisiana. The small, dilapidated structure is a remnant of the plantation quarters that housed enslaved people. Structures depicted in Bey’s series In This Here Place sit on the land of five former plantations in a state that once had 350 plantations that relied on the forced labor of over 300,000 enslaved people under the control of 22,000 slaveholders. Louisiana had a reputation as one of the most brutal slaveholding states in the United States. It was also one of the most productive, but at a high human cost. By 1860 Louisiana plantations produced one-sixth of the nation’s cotton and almost all its sugar. Enslaved people involved in sugar production had the lowest life expectancy of all plantation economies.
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, 2021; sold to present collection, 2025.
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