Dawoud Bey’s Shadowy Landscapes Trace Paths of the Underground Railroad

Someday you be walking down the road andyou hear something or see something going on.So clear. And you think it’s you thinking it up.A thought picture. But no. It’s when you bump intoa rememory that belongs to somebody else.Where I was before I came here, that place is real. 
—Toni Morrison, Beloved, 1987
 
One can start a discussion about “Night Coming Tenderly, Black,” Dawoud Bey’s most recent series of photographs, by reviewing what they are not.