C. DANIEL DAWSON

C. Daniel Dawson first learned photography at the age of 14 from his father who was an avid amateur photographer. While in high school, he continued his studies by sitting in on classes at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts. In college he studied with Ralph Hattersley (Columbia University), Lizette Model (New School for Social Research), and Paul Caponegro (New York University/ Graduate Institute of Film and Television). In between studies Dawson also worked as a medical photographer at the New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry where he developed his craft under Marshall Taub, the Chief Medical Photographer. At NYU, Dawson also studied the history of photography under John Szarkowski and Peter Bunnell, who were at the time the curators of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC). While in film school he met Louis Draper, one of the founding members of Kamoinge, a pioneering group of African American photographers founded in 1963. Dawson was later asked to join the group in 1970. In 1971 he was awarded a CAP Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, in 1978 a CETA Grant from the Cultural Council Foundation (NYC), and in 1984 an independent grant to photograph in Brazil. As a photographer, he has been published in numerous books and magazines and has shown in over 37 exhibitions. In 2020 he exhibited in Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, VA) and in 2021 in Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC). This exhibit will also travel to the Getty Museum (Los Angeles) and the Cleveland Museum later in 2021.

Dawson began curating while still in high school at Arts High in Newark, New Jersey. He went on to become the first James Van Der Zee Curator of Photography, Film and Video at the Studio Museum in Harlem. In addition he has curated more than 70 exhibitions including Harlem Heyday: The Photographs of James Van Der Zee and The Sound I Saw: The Jazz Photographs of Roy DeCarava. His essay for the Sound I Saw… exhibition catalog was selected as one of the finest examples of African American writings about art. The catalog also received a Citation of Merit from the Art Libraries Society of New York in 1984. He most recently co-curated Race, Myth, Art and Justice, a photographic exhibition at the Caribbean Cultural Center-African Diaspora Institute. On numerous occasions Dawson has also served as a judge for the New York State Council on the Arts and the American Photographic Institute. He has also been associated with many prize-winning films including Head and Heart by James Mannas and Capoeiras of Brazil by Warrington Hudlin. He has worked as a consultant for the American Museum of Natural History, Caribbean Cultural Center, Cooper Hewitt Museum, International Center for Photography, Lincoln Center, Museum for African Art, Ralph Appelbaum Associates and three different divisions of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He is currently a curator with the Jazz at Lincoln Center's curatorial team. 

As a scholar, C. Daniel Dawson has lectured at the House of World Cultures-Berlin, the Kit Tropenmuseum-Amsterdam, the University of California-Berkeley, University of Texas-Austin, University of Wisconsin-Madison, New School for Social Research, Columbia University, Princeton University and the Federal Universities of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro-Brazil. Dawson has also taught seminars on African Spirituality in the Americas at Columbia University, University of Iowa, New York University, and Yale University. He is currently a professor at Columbia University in the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department, and also serves on the curatorial committee for La Casita, an oral tradition/poetry/music project for Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors.