DOUG DUBOIS [NOMINATED BY LODGE KERRIGAN]

CLIFFORD WOODS, 1987


— When I was 26, I became a friend and fan of Clifford Woods, a largely unknown and never recorded alto saxophone player. Clifford came up on the west coast with the likes of Harold Land, Dupree Bolton and Chet Baker. On weekdays, Clifford could be found playing in front of the China Trade Center on Grant street in San Francisco; on weekends, his spot was on Union Square in front of Macy’s.

I was a bit of a groupie, recording Clifford’s music, conversations and stories on my Sony Walkman, and making mix tapes for Clifford and his friends. I made this tape right before I left San Francisco – you can hear Clifford playing on the street in Chinatown; talking with his girlfriend, Melita; singing Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac in a stoned, close harmony with a drummer who’s name I can’t remember; and in a conversation with me that’s still painful to hear and hard for me to excuse.


Doug DuBois’ photographs are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in NY, SFMOMA in San Francisco, J. Paul Getty Museum and LACAMA in Los Angeles, The Museum of Fine Art in Houston, the Library of Congress in Washington DC and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The National Endowment for the Arts, SITE Santa Fe, Light Works and The John Gutmann Foundation. Doug DuBois has exhibited at The J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art and Higher Pictures in New York; SITE, Santa Fe; New Langton Arts in San Francisco; PARCO Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, Museo D’arte Contemporanea in Rome, Italy and The Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. His photographs have been published by Aperture, My last day at Seventeen, (2015) and All the Days and Nights (2009); the J. Paul Getty Museum, Where We Live: Photographs from the Berman Collection (2007); the Museum of Modern Art, The Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort (1991). Doug DuBois is an associate professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University.