CARRIE MAE WEEMS - People Search Directory

ated by such video artists as Martha RosJer,
Cecilia Condit and Dara Birnbaum.
38. Stephen Heath, The Sexual Fix (New York:
Schocken Books, 1984), 85
39. From August 1989 through 1990, Weems
created the photographs. She began with the
man's stOlY, including a set of images of the
man looking in from the outside, which was
never used. She then created the "girlfriends,"
using friend and photographer Joan Braderman
as one of her actors. The last was the child's
series, for which a friend's child posed. Weems
began working on the written texts after most
of the photographs were completed. According
to the artist, the first draft had a bitter sound
and was tolel completely from woman's point
of view, based upon her own experiences.
Desiring a more open series of voices and after
speaking with a friend to garner a man's point
of view, she turned to song lyrics and popular
phrases. This material, when edited and
embellished, formed texts for Untitled.
40. This series is Weems's answer to Laura
Mulvey's important, yet potentially debilit3ting
article, "Visual Pleasure and the Narrative
Cinema," Screen 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1975): 6-18.
Reprinted in AI1 after Modernism: Rethinking
Representation, ed. Brian Wallis (New York:
New Museum of Contemporary An; Boston:
David R. Godine, 1984)
41. Calvin Reid, "Carrie Mae Weems," Am
Magazine 65, no. 5 (January 1991): 79.
42. Laura Trippi, And 22 Mtllion Ve1Y Tired
and VelY Angry People, exhibition brochure
(New York: New Museum of Contemporary
An,1991)
43. Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam, 12
Million Black Voices: A Folk History ojthe Negro
in the United States (New York: Viking, 1941),
146-47
44. "Beauties of the Common Tool: A portfolio
by Walker Evans," Fol1une 52, no. 1 (July
1955): ]03-07.
45. In his portfolio Evans compares the hardware
store to a kind of offbeat museum, where
forms are wedded to function, elegance, candor
and purity.
46. This quotation was taken by the artist from
By A ny Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews
and a Letter by Malcolm X, ed. George
Breitman (New York: Pathfinder Press, ]970).
47. In the brochure for the exhibition of And
22 Million VelY Tired and Very Angry People at
the New Museum, Laura Trippi describes these
two images as follows: "While the musket
[actually a riflel held by the black man in the
cropped image 'An Armed Man'... suggests
the period of the Civil War, the image of 'A
Veiled Woman,' her sheer black veil held aloft
to shield her face, conjures up the memOlY of
the Algerian War against French colonial occupation,
and the explosive, influential film about
that war, The Battle ojAlgiers"
48. Trippi, And 22 Million. . exhibition
brochure.
49. Antonio Gramsci's theories are articulated in
PI1son Notebooks (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1975). See also Stuart Hall,
"Gramsci's Relevance for the Srudy of Race and
Ethnicity," Journal ojCommunication InqUiry,
10, no. 2 (Summer 1986): 5-27. The Hall essay
provides an overview of Gramsci's Prison
Notebooks and an analysis of the importance of
Gramsci's theories for revolutionary Marxist
politics today.
50. Stuart Hall, "Gramsci's Relevance," Journal
ojCommunication InqUiry (Summer 1986):
19-21; 23-26
5]. Carrie Mae Weems, And 22 Million Ve7y
Tired and Very Angry People (San Francisco:
San Francisco At11nstitute), endnote. Other
works in the fore-mentioned exhibition based
on a similar theme include: the earlier Ode to
Affirmative Action installation (1989); Untitled
(1992), which consists of photomontages using
Civil Rights movement photographs; and In the
Midst oJthe Stonn (1992), "an installation of
bottles of Black Pride body ointment and
screened wall text."
52. Weems had been interested in the Sea
Islands since her coursework in the ]980s with
Dr. Lydia Parrish, a Berkeley folklorist famous
for her studies on St. Helena in the Georgia Sea
Islands. She also was aware of Jeanne
Moutoussamy-Ashe's lovely photographs of exslaves
and their descendants on Daufuskie
Island in South Carolina. See DauJuskie Island.
A Photographic Essay, with a foreword by Alex
Haley (Columbia, S.C: University of South
Carolina Press, 1982)
53. For an introduction to the wealth of African
American folklore, see Alan Dundes, Mother
Wit Jrom the Laughing Barrel Readings in the
Interpretation ojAJro-American Folklore
(Englewood Cliffs, N.].: Prentice-Hall, 1973).
54. Robert Farris Thompson, Flash oJthe Spirit.
;ifrican and AJro-American AI1 and Philosophy
(New York, Random House, ]983)
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