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This one says, “It was clear I was not Manet’s type. In her series, “Not Manet’s Type,” Weems critiques the white male art “masters,” and how beauty is defined through their paintings” (opening photo, bottom row, first image).Įach photo has a paragraph in red on a black background describing the scene. Weems confronts historical depictions and restages them with ‘what if …’ questions. Historian of photography, professor at NYU, and a photographer herself, Deborah Willis says, “Weems’s photographs are ‘performing beauty’ through lighting, posing, acting and fashion. Each photo tells a new story about the woman whose name is never mentioned in the series of untitled prints (opening photo, top row, first three images). The background is a wall with a door on its right. The camera looks along the table lit by a single overhead light. The point of view in all of the series is the same. Each image features Carrie Mae in scenes that happen there - a woman and her daughter each with makeup, the same woman with a man smoking, a bottle of whiskey on the table between them and a woman hugging a man as he sits at the table reading a newspaper. Kitchen Table SeriesĬarrie Mae Weems seems best known for her series of photographs that take place around a kitchen table made in 1990. Her work focuses on the importance of Black women, both in life and in the photographs she produces.

This is it.’”Ĭarrie Mae Weems may well be the best contemporary photographer working today in the field of fine art. She said “I think that the first time I picked up that camera, I thought, ‘Oh, OK. When she turned 20, her boyfriend, Raymond, a labor organizer and Marxist, gave her a camera. It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely.” -Carrie Mae Weems “The camera gave me an incredible freedom.