Kitchen Table Series

 

Self-Portrait

"Untitled (Women and Phone)" By: Carrie Mae Weems

On Photography

Quote #1: “To collect photographs is to collect the world.”

-        To me, this quote was beautifully written since there is truth behind it. With every photo we see we see memories that people share, locations around the world, experience the livelihood of many people, etc. We truly are able to collect the world with each photograph.

Quote #2: “Photographs, which package the world, seem to invite the packaging.”

-        Photographs are able to contain so much information within them, and hold a lot of value to people. So much so that we place photographs into frames and hang them up. Some go as far as to be hung up in museums to be bought of sold off. Photographs do as the quote says and package themselves into the world.

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

Quote #1: “Weems’s black-and-white photographs are like mirrors, each reflecting a collective experience: how selfhood shifts through passage of time; the sudden distance between people, both passable and impassable; the roles that women accumulate and oscillate between; how life emanates from the small space we occupy in the world.”  

-        This series of photos are meant to reflect what is going on in front of them, showcasing the narrative that Weems intended. It all takes place at one location, demonstrating the life of the woman happening and showing that time is passing.

Quote #2: “..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.”

-        We see the woman go through a journey of finding love, having a daughter, growing distant from her love and winds up enjoying being with herself rather than viewing it as a negative aspect of her life.