Three young Black girls in flowered dresses are pictured laying on a lawn, one gazing skyward, one looking askance and one looking straight at the camera, flowers wrapping her hair, as she seemingly dares the viewer to look away.
The photo is from the series Mayflowers by visual artist Carrie Mae Weems. It is her artistic response to a painting she loves – Manet’s Olympia. In Olympia, the central figure is a nude woman laying on a bed, seemingly daring the viewer to look away. In the background, a Black servant is seen offering Olympia a bouquet of flowers.
Weems, widely acknowledged to be one of America’s greatest living photographers, says that her body of work “attempts to make the invisible visible by focusing on individuals and groups of people disproportionately left out of the historical record.”
Best known for her photography, Weems is also a filmmaker, writer, performer and installation artist. Born in Portland, Oregon, she moved to San Francisco to study dance shortly after giving birth to her daughter Faith at 16. At 20, a boyfriend gifted her with a camera for her birthday. As she held it in her hands she says she realized that this was the tool to express her artistry.
Weems completed her first series, Family Pictures and Stories, around the time she received her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Photographs, text and spoken word are used to explore the movement of Black families out of the South and into the North, using her own family’s story.
In one of her most well-known works, The Kitchen Table Series, she is both subject and director, presenting a group of staged tableaus reminiscent of every woman’s story. She says they are meant to question ideas about “the role of tradition, the nature of family . . . relationships between men and women, women and their children, and between women and other women . . .”
Throughout the years her projects have consistently explored the themes of gender, race, class, family, identity, history and the consequences of power. Among her many awards and honors is a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship Grant. She is also the first African-American to have a solo retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Weems is also a collaborator. The young girls in her Mayflower series were discovered when she saw a young girl and her mother walking along the road. They introduced her to other family members that she included in the series and that she continued to photograph throughout the years. Now adults with children of their own, she considers them part of her family. The same holds true for other subjects in her photos.
With work in museums around the world and her place in photographic history well established, Weems uses her voice to speak out on the importance of art that represents a wider range of people and voices. She is an enthusiastic supporter of young artists and shares her skills through lectures, symposiums and visiting professor positions. She is currently Artist In Residence at New York’s Syracuse University where her husband, artist Jeffery Hoone, is Executive Director of the non-profit organization Light Work, which provides direct support to emerging and under-represented photographers and digital artists.
In a recent talk at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Weems said “I am by no means a great artist. I’m just a hardworking sister.” She was only half right.
Photo Credit: John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation