About this artwork
In the dispiriting years just after World War I, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote the famous line: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” We have since gotten used to living with pieces—pieces of time, heritage, even morality. Although Dawoud Bey sometimes seeks a solitary moment or a single point of view in his photographs, he knows that the essence of what lives before the camera often eludes such an approach. Thus, in Candida and Her Mother, Celia, II, he emphasized the complexities of mother-daughter relationships. The grid format of his composition includes frames in which the mother’s and daughter’s faces and hands are captured together, as well as separate frames in which they gaze back at the artist. In the wholesome beauty of this loving family bond, Bey constructed a cohesive sanctuary apart from the horrors and ambiguities of our time.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Photography and Media
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Artist
- Dawoud Bey
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Title
- Candida and Her Mother, Celia, II
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- Made 1994
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Medium
- Internal dye diffusion transfer prints (6)
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Inscriptions
- Unmarked recto of each panel; inscribed verso of each panel, on backing board, upper center, in black ink: "Candida and Her Mother Celia II"
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Dimensions
- Each image, approx: 61.4 × 53.2 cm (24 3/16 × 21 in.); each paper, approx: 76.8 × 65.4 cm (30 1/4 × 25 3/4 in.); 79.7 × 59 × 5.7 cm (31 7/16 × 23 1/4 × 2 1/4 in.); each frame: 79.7 × 59.1 × 5.8 cm (31 3/8 × 23 1/4 × 2 1/4 in.)
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Credit Line
- Gladys N. Anderson Endowment
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Reference Number
- 2002.554a-f
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Copyright
- © Dawoud Bey.
Extended information about this artwork
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