Mark and Eric

The double portrait Mark and Eric is comprised of six individually-framed prints photographed from slightly different angles: a technique which has since become iconic of Bey’s early-90s work. Using a large-format Polaroid camera in a studio setting, Bey made multiple photographs of his sitters and then combined the resulting images into a single work. These fractured portraits capture the sitter over time, rather than in one instant, so that there are slight variations in pose and mood between one part of the image and the next. Informed by then-current theoretical debates about identity and representation, these portraits also extended Bey’s commitment to correcting biases that he saw in the art world: much of his work has focused on subjects, such as these two young African American men, who have not generally been treated with the kind of mutual respect that is evident is this portrait.

From the beginning of his work as a photographer, Bey has been interested in the capacity of the medium to powerfully document lived experience, and to provide a record of both shared and private memory. The subtle differences in perspective among the six prints that compose this portrait help to open up the work, and the sense of what is being depicted. Bey’s sensitivity to the idiosyncratic body language and expressions of his subjects is apparent, as they seem to return the acknowledgment, gazing back in his direction. This double portrait can also be seen as a precursor to the exploration of portraiture, identity, and adolescence that Bey explored in collaboration with an interdisciplinary exhibition and residency team for his 2003 The Chicago Project at the Smart Museum.