Kitchen Table Series - Riya Bhajan

 

Inspired by Carrie Mae Weems's "Kitchen Table Series"

Susan Sontag

On Photography 

1. "Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire."

        "Miniatures of reality" is an interesting but accurate way of symbolizing photographs. Whenever we are looking back or reminiscing on photos, it's like we are looking into a time portal of what life was like back then. The feelings, the memories, the people, they were all captured and formed into a square 'miniature reality' to look back on in our photo albums (digital and/or physical photo albums).

2. "Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are."

    As an artist, I always describe my portrait artwork as taking a picture using my paintbrush or pencil onto a piece of paper. I appreciate that Sontag believes photographs are related to the concept of painting and drawing just like how I believe my art is related to taking a photograph.

Carrie Mae Weems

Revisiting Carrie Mae Weems’s Landmark “Kitchen Table Series”

1. "Arts, it is most often seen in parts, through individual scenes and rarely with its accompanying text: a story of the lovers told in vivid vignettes, from their meeting in the “glistening, twinkling crystal light of August/September sky,” through all the tests and balancing acts and storms of their relationship, until the woman finds solace in solitude."

    This quote represents that art can tell a deep story and without the Artist's statement we are led with hundreds of interpretations, perspectives, and assumptions of what the true story or meaning of an art piece is.

2. “I think that most work that’s made by Black artists is considered to be about Blackness. Unlike work that’s made by white artists, which is assumed to be universal at its core.”

This statement is very insightful, this is why the representation of People of Color and Black artists is important in the art world. Black artists don't get the acknowledgment they deserve as being creatively "universal."