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 her first collection of photographs, text, and spoken word, called Family Pictures and Stories. The images told the story of her family, and she has said that in this project she was trying to explore the movement of black families out of the South and into the North, using her family as a model for the larger theme. Her next series, called Ain’t Jokin’, was completed in 1988. It focused on racial jokes and internalized racism. Weems has said that throughout the 1980s she was turning away from the documentary photography genre, instead “creating representations that appeared to be documents but were in fact staged” and also “incorporating text, using multiples images, diptychs and triptychs, and constructing narratives.” Gender issues were the next focal point for Carrie. The Kitchen Table series was completed in 1990. About Kitchen Table and Family Pictures and Stories, Weems has said, “I use my own constructed image as a vehicle for questioning ideas about the role of tradition, the nature of family, monogamy, polygamy, relationships between men and women, between women and their children, and between women and other women—underscoring the critical problems and the possible resolves.” She has expressed disbelief and concern about the exclusion of images of the black community, particularly black women, from the popular media, and aims to represent these excluded subjects and speak to their experience through her work. Weems has also reflected on the themes and inspirations of her work as a whole, saying, “...from the very beginning, I’ve been interested in the idea of power and the consequences of power; relationships are made and articulated through power. Another thing that’s interesting about the early work is that even though I’ve been engaged in the idea of autobiography, other ideas have been more important: the role of narrative, the social levels of humor, the deconstruction of documentary, the construction of history, the use of text, storytelling, performance, and the role of memory have all been more central to my thinking than autobiography.” Other series created by Weems include: the Sea Island AACT NEWPLAYFEST Escaping the labyrinth WORLD PREMIERE A romantic comedy worthy of the gods – the Greek gods. Oct. 15-24, 2021
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