In the 35mm camera street photography of his series Harlem, U.S.A., Dawoud Bey represents a complex neighborhood and its residents at a particular moment in time. It also embodies the artist’s exploration of his own family’s history in Harlem. ​“I wanted to make photographs that affirmed the lives of ordinary black people in the community that my mother and father had previously lived in,” says Bey. ​“From the time I spent visiting family, friends and relatives there when I was growing up, I knew that with the exception of [Roy] DeCarava’s work, the people of Harlem were often viewed through photographs in terms of social pathology. I wanted to contest the history of those kinds of black representations and also amplify through my photographs the lives of people like my family who still lived there and were making a way.”