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Albion College Art and Art History Department

Thursday July 2nd, 2020 - 12:27 pm

Carrie Mae Weems' career spans across three decades and encompasses works that explore race, class, and gender identity. Her artist approach encompasses a variety of applications such as text, fabric, photographs, video works, and performances. In 1995 she began a body of work that work specifically confronted photography's racist history and application. The photos themselves were taken by Swiss photographer, Louis Agassiz, as an attempt to produce visual evidence to his belief in racial inferiority. Weem, by utilizing appropriated historic imagery of American slaves, centers the experiences of black bodies as the foundation and entry into the larger narrative around racism in America. “I’m trying to heighten a kind of critical awareness around the way in which these photographs were intended.” She hopes this strategy “gives the subject another level of humanity and another level of dignity that was originally missing in the photograph.”

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Selected images from the series "From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried" 1995-1996
Two monochromatic c-prints with sand-blasted text on glass in artist frames, Ed. 6/10
26 1/2 x 58 in. (67.3 x 147.3 cm) overall
26 1/2 x 22 3/4 in. (67.3 x 57.8 cm) each ... See MoreSee Less