Carrie Mae Weems
Some photographers take pictures. Carrie Mae Weems uses photography to pose questions about power, history, race, and identity.
In her landmark 1990 “Kitchen Table Series,” Weems cast herself as a Black woman at the center of everyday domestic life. The photos—fictional worlds that unfolded around one unassuming table—explored intimacy, loneliness, motherhood, and friendship with a level of complexity that was still rare in contemporary art.
At a time when Black women were often excluded from major art institutions or reduced to symbols within them, Weems' work held space for both their physical bodies and their interior lives.
In the four decades that followed, her influence has extended far beyond photography to include mixed media, installations, and videos—even a 2024 Bottega Veneta ad campaign starring rapper A$AP Rocky and his sons.
“In one way or another, my work endlessly explodes the limits of tradition,” she once said in an interview. “I’m determined to find new models to live by. Aren’t you?”
Weems’ work—much like the artist herself—has never been interested in easy answers. Instead, she asks us to sit longer with the things society is quick to simplify or ignore.
