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Essay On Carrie Mae Weem

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Carrie Mae Weems: "The Kitchen Table Series"

Carrie Mae Weems is an American artist who was known for creating works to reveal contemporary African-American life and her own experience as a woman. For gender and family issues, Kitchen Table Series, which was created in 1990, is one of Weems’s most famous photographic works. In the series, Weems made herself became both the photographer and the performer, and all of the images were centered in the same domestic scene – kitchen table. Looks like an everyday snapshot, Weems shows the different traditional roles she played in her life and the intimate relationships that she has with other people: men and women, mother and children, and women and their girlfriends. In The Kitchen Table Series, Weems shows her strong ability of storytelling. Every photo is one complete episode; together they become a consistent storyline. If you look at these images in a specific sequence, you would feel like you are reading a fluent and interesting visual novel. Viewers could easily understand what happened in the photos by watching character’s body language, gestures, and facial expressions. They also have their own interpretations and resonates because of variety …show more content…

In the photo “Lobster Dinner”, Weems reaches out to the man and does not eat anything, while the man concentrates on his lobster and the way he eats looks greedy and selfish. This is Weems favorite piece in the series. She explained that it symbolizes that in everyday life, man is taking and woman is giving. The poses they made in the photos are highly constructed, but also like a documentary. In my point of view, this dramatic style reflects people’s mental activities in a stronger way and it allows viewers to involve themselves to the photos emotionally. That’s why this artwork looks more real than

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