September 8 – December 2, 2013

Acclaimed portrait photographer Dawoud Bey presents an exhibition that symbolically commemorates the four young girls whose lives were senselessly lost on September 15, 1963, in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, as well as the two Birmingham boys who lost their lives in the resulting violence that day, Virgil Ware and Johnny Robinson.

To create the portraits, Bey will photograph girls, women, boys and men who presently live in Birmingham. These girls and boys will be the same ages (11, 13, 14, and 16) as the children who lost their lives that day in 1963, and the women and men will be the ages of those boys and girls if they were still alive today. Without specifically referencing these incidents, the project serves as both a memorial to lives lost, and as a message of hope and promise for the future.

The Birmingham Project is presented by PNC Bank; the catalogue is sponsored by EBSCO Media.