MacArthur Fellow and Professor Emeritus of Photography at Columbia College in Chicago, Dawoud Bey is one of the most celebrated photographers in American history. Fellow colleague and renowned photographer Kelli Connell is an artist who investigates sexuality, gender, identity, and the relationship between photographer and subject. Natasha Egan, Executive Director at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, moderates a discussion for Chicago Humanities on re-engaging with and reimagining history through photography. Both Bey (Elegy, Aperture, 2023) and Connell (Pictures for Charis, Aperture, 2024) draw on references from their latest books that span their recent work and present photography’s capacity for reimagining our connection to history.

Dawoud Bey (born in New York, 1953) has for decades made groundbreaking and evocative work about the histories of Black communities. His numerous honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. A major career retrospective of his work, An American Project, was co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2020–22). Bey holds a master of fine arts degree from Yale University School of Art and is currently professor of art and a former Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago, where he has taught since 1998. His books include Class Pictures (Aperture, 2007), Seeing Deeply (2018), Dawoud Bey on Photographing People and Communities (Aperture, 2019),and Street Portraits (2021).

Kelli Connell is an artist whose work investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer / sitter relationships. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J Paul Getty Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Dallas Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Publications of her work include Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis (Aperture, March 2024), PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture), Photo Art: The New World of Photography (Aperture), and the monograph Kelli Connell: Double Life (DECODE Books). Connell has received fellowships and residencies from The Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, PLAYA, Peaked Hill Trust, LATITUDE, Light Work, and The Center for Creative Photography. Connell is an editor at SKYLARK Editions and a professor at Columbia College Chicago.

Since 2011, Natasha Egan has served as the executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago (MoCP), where she was previously the associate director and curator since 2000. She has organized over fifty exhibitions with a focus on contemporary Asian art and artists concerned with societal issues, such as the environment, war, and economics. Egan was a guest curator for the 2010 FotoFest Biennial in Houston; the United States pavilion curator for the 2016 Photo Dubai Exhibition; and the 2019 Lianzhou Photography Biennial in China.

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Tags: Chicago, Chicago History Museum, Dawoud Bey, History Reconsidered: Reimagining History through Photography, Kelli Connell, Lincoln Park, Natasha Egan