best known for her work in the field of photography. Her award-winning 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. Early life and Education Weems was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1953, the second of seven children. At the age of 16 she gave birth to her first and only child, a daughter named Faith C. Weems. Later that year she moved out of her parent’s home and relocated to San Francisco to study modern dance with Anna Halprin at a workshop . She decided to continue her arts schooling and attended the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, graduating at the age of 28 with her B.A. She received her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Weems also participated in the folklore graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley. While in her early twenties, Carrie Mae Weems was politically active in the labor movement as a union organizer. She was inspired to pursue photography only after she came across The Black Photography Annual, a book of images by African-American photographers including Shawn Walker, Beuford Smith, Anthony Barboza, Ming Smith, Adger Cowans, and Roy DeCarava. This led her to New York City, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she began to meet other artists and photographers such as Frank Stewart and Coreen Simpson, and they began to form a community. In 1976 Weems took a photography class at the Museum taught by Dawoud Bey. She returned to San Francisco, but lived bi-coastally and was involved with the Studio Museum and a community of photographers in New York. Weems lives in Brooklyn and Syracuse, New York, with her husband Jeffrey Hoone. Career Highlights In 1983, Carrie Mae Weems completed 39
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