Two Girls at Lady D’s, Harlem, 1976

Two Girls at Lady D’s, Harlem, 1976

“I spent five years in the mid-to-late 1970s making photographs in Harlem, New York. It was the first project I undertook at the beginning of my career. I was led back there by my family’s history in the neighborhood: my mother and father had met in a church in Harlem and eventually got married. When I was born several years later, they moved to Queens, to a house with a front yard and backyard, something more spacious than the Harlem apartment they had in Sugar Hill. But we continued to visit the neighborhood, as various friends and family still lived there.
In 1975 I decided to ‘return’ to the community where I had never lived, but had a deep connection to, to make photographs. I encountered these two young girls one afternoon on Seventh Avenue near West 138th Street. When I asked if I could make a picture of them in front of this establishment, they joyfully struck an exuberant pose for me, full of all of the energy and expressiveness of youth.”
—Dawoud Bey

This image appears in Dawoud Bey on Photographing People and Communities, a volume of The Photography Workshop Series, published by Aperture in 2019.
© Dawoud Bey

In celebration of Aperture’s seventieth anniversary, we are pleased to offer this limited-edition print as part of the seventy x seventy print sale. This sale offers a rare opportunity for art enthusiasts to collect original works by some of the most celebrated and influential photographers in the history of the medium while supporting Aperture. Each print is available in an edition of seventy, signed by the artist or estate-stamped. Proceeds from the sale benefit the artist and/or a designated charity of their choice, and provide support for Aperture’s not-for-profit publishing, educational, and public programs.

These works are available to collect through September 30 while prints in the edition remain available.

Image size: 6.3 x 9.4 inches
Paper size: 8 x 10 inches
Edition of 70 and 5 Artist’s Proofs
Archival pigment print
Signed and numbered by the artist on a label

Printed by Laumont Editions in New York.

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Black and white wood framing options are available for an additional $100.
Please allow an additional 3 weeks for framed orders to ship.
Mat dimensions: 10 x 12 inches
Frame dimensions: 11 x 13 inches

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Contact prints@aperture.org with any inquiries about the edition or questions regarding shipping.
An adult signature is required for delivery of all limited edition prints.

The work of Dawoud Bey (born in Queens, New York, 1958) is held by major collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Bey’s honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, the United States Artists Fellowship; a Guggenheim Fellowship; and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. He is professor of art and a former Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago. His monograph Class Pictures was also published by Aperture in 2007.