Carrie Mae Weems
Carrie Mae Weems
Carrie Mae Weemsis an American artist who works with text, fabric, audio, digital images, and installation video but is best known for her work in the field of photography. Her award-winning photographs, films, and videos have been displayed in over 50 exhibitions in the United States and abroad and focus on serious issues that face African Americans today, such as racism, gender relations, politics, and personal identity. She has said, "Let me say that my primary concern in art, as...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
CountryUnited States of America
emerged incredible kinds social
I emerged in that incredible moment in the 1980s when all kinds of social questions about subjectivity and objectivity, about who was making, who was looking.
challenges change changing home impossible larger money mouth personal social unlikely
It's impossible to change the social without changing the personal - you have to put your money where your mouth is. And if you're not making those challenges at home, it's unlikely you'll make them in a larger setting.
dominated gallery majority men shows vast women
I think that still, for the most part, even in 2010, the vast majority of museum shows and gallery shows and gallerists are pretty much dominated by men. So having a sense of what women are up to, for me, frankly, is very, very important.
avoid family few growing
I come from a family of Mississippi sharecroppers just a few generations away from slavery, and I experienced a lot of racism growing up - you can't avoid that if you're a person of color in this country.
photography taken take-me
I didnt know photography would take me to the places that it has taken me
simple people trying
I don't like directing a lot of people. So trying to keep things really simple and elegant is my preferred way of working.
moving receiving purpose
Suddenly this camera, this thing, allowed me to move around the world in a certain kind of way, with a certain kind of purpose. (On receiving a camera for her twenty-first birthday)
moving looks body
I really like the structure of my body. It moves well, it looks good, it photographs well, it understands gesture and nuance.
needs video three
Sometimes my work needs to be photographic, sometimes it needs words, sometimes it needs to have a relationship with music, sometimes it needs all three and become a video projection.
birthday art my-boyfriend
I got my first camera when I was 21 - my boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday - but at that point politics was my life, and I viewed the camera as a tool for expressing my political beliefs rather than as an art medium.
risk important use
It's very important for me to really use this body as a barometer of a certain kind of knowledge--to take the personal risk of exposing my own body in a certain kind of way. I can't ask anybody else to do something that I don't do first myself.
photography powerful believe
Photography can still be used to champion activism and change. I believe this, even while standing in the cool winds of postmodernism... Postmodernism looked radical, but it wasn't. As a movement it was profoundly liberal and became a victim of itself. Precisely at this historical moment, when multicultural democracy is the order of the day, photography can be used as a powerful weapon toward instituting political and cultural change. I for one will continue to work toward this end.
people feelings done
How you get work done is by exploiting yourself and your feelings, and sometimes people get in the way.
beautiful art powerful
Despite the variety of my explorations, throughout it all it has been my contention that my responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the roof-tops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specifics of our historic moment.