She has also moved into experimenting with new forms of art in addition to photography. Throughout these years, her photographic work gave a voice to hidden figures and marginalised groups, while also creating room for other Black female artists to produce art and step into the contemporary art scene.ĭuring the early 2000s, Weems worked on a number of photographic projects including Louisiana Project (2003), Museums (2006), Constructing History (2008), African Jewels (2009), and Blue Notes (2015). Each of her series focused heavily on racism, sexism, and the representation of lived African American experience – a subject historically hidden from the mainstream popular media and the art canon. Besides Family Pictures and Stories (1983), some of her major series of the time were Ain’t Jokin’ (1988), American Icons (1989) and The Kitchen Table Series (1990), which brought her to international attention. Strongly influenced by the work of African American photographers who were working to document the black experience within the United States, Weems set out to complete a number of photographic series. She obtained a BA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, and later an MFA at the University of California, San Diego, and finally enrolled in a folklore studies program at the University of California, Berkeley, which sparked her interest in the observation methods used in social sciences. It wasn’t in fact until 1978 that she got hold of a camera and began her first major photographic series entitled Family Pictures and Stories, which took 5 years to complete. At 16, she fell pregnant with her only daughter, Faith, and left her family home to move to San Francisco where she would pursue her dreams of becoming a dancer. Born in Portland on April 20th, 1953, Weems took part in dance and street theatre from a young age.

Carrie mae weems artist