Carrie Mae Weems was born in Portland, Oregon in 1953. In the year 1965, Weems became interested in the arts. She began her artist journey by getting into performance arts as a street performer. In 1973 she got her first camera as a birthday gift and began taking pictures. This was the beginning of her photography career.
Carrie Mae uses photography as well as video, text, fabric, digital images and instalation video in her work. Through these images and texts, she shows historical events s well as the significance of race. Weems makes you stare racism in the face. She makes you aware of its existence through her photography and texts. Weems also plays with class and social identity.
Weems has taken hundreds of pictures, and she has over dozen series. The series that I like the best is her “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried” series. This was done between 1995 and 1996. This series consist of 33 images. What I like about the piece is the harsh messages of reality that are stamped right on the images in white text. Weems got these images from Harvard and they threatened to sue. Weems told them that it would be a great idea to sue. She thought that it would be a great moral case. Harvard ended up not sueing and then bought all of her “stolen” photos.
Carrie Mae Weems art shows harsh history and harsh reality. Her art has made me look at racism, class, and social identity differently. It also lets me know that racism isn’t dead, but alive and thriving. But how we look at it and act upon it either makes us the same or different.
Research was done on pbs.org/art21, carriemaeweems.net and www.studiomuseum.org
To look at the whole series of the pictures posted, here are the links:
http://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/from-here.html
http://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/colored-people.
htmlhttp://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/mandingo.html
