In Birmingham, Dawoud Bey commemorates the four young girls and two boys who lost their lives on September 15, 1963, in the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church and the violence that followed. In the series of six diptychs, he pairs two portraits, one of a boy or girl the age of each of the victims when they were killed (ages 11 to 16) and the other of an adult the age that child would now be had she or he not been murdered. The portraits—all of current Birmingham citizens—were made in the Birmingham Museum of Art, where African American admission was restricted to Tuesday, “Negro Day,” until 1964, and in the Bethel Baptist Church, a central headquarters for the civil-rights movement in Alabama.

The portraits serve as a powerful memorial, giving a palpable, physical presence to the time stolen from the six martyred children and the impact it had on the community around them. In exploring the relationship of the past to the present, Bey also sends a poignant message of hope for the future in today’s culture of continued racial violence and school shootings, with a promise to restore humanity.