Carrie Mae Weems

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Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953) is an award winning photographer and artist. Her 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 in politics, is with the status and place of Afro-Americans in our country."^[1]

Weems was born in Portland, Oregon in 1953 the second of seven children to Myrlie and Carrie Weems. After high school, she moved to San Francisco to study modern dance. She decided to continue her arts schooling and attended the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. She graduated at the age of twenty-eight with her BA. She received her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Weems also participated in the graduate program in folklore at the University of California, Berkley.^[2]

While in her early twenties, Carrie Mae Weems was politically active in the labor movement as a union organizer. Her first camera was used for politics rather than for artistic purposes. She was inspired to pursue photography only after she came across The Black Photography Annual, a book of images by African-American photographers. This led her to New York, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she began to meet a number of artists and other photographers such as Frank Stewart and Coreen Simpson, and began to form a community. In 1976 Weems took a photography class at the Museum taught by Dawoud Bey.

In 1983, Carrie Mae Weems completed her first collection of photographs called, Family Pictures and Stories. The images told the story of her family. Her next series, called Ain't Jokin', was completed in 1988. It focused on racial jokes and internalized racism. Another series called American Icons, completed in 1989, also focused on racism. Gender issues were the next focal point for Carrie Mae Weems. It was the topic in one of her most well known collections called The Kitchen Table series.^[3]

In her almost thirty year career, Carrie Mae Weems has won numerous awards. She was named Photographer of the Year by the Friends of Photography. In 2005, she was awarded the Distinguished Photographer's Award in recognition of her significant contributions to the world of photography.^[4] Her talents have also been recognized by numerous colleges, including Harvard and Wellesley, with fellowships and artist-in-residence and visiting professor positions.

Weems lives in Brooklyn and Syracuse, NY with her husband Jeffrey Hoone.