Carrie Mae Weems

Untitled, 2003
Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled, 2003, chromogenic print. 30 x 30 in., Schwartz Art Collection, Harvard Business School. Courtesy Carrie Mae Weems and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Carrie Mae Weems (American, born 1953), Untitled, 2003, chromogenic print, 30 x 30 in. Schwartz Art Collection, Harvard Business School, 2004.15. Courtesy Carrie Mae Weems and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Carrie Mae Weems investigates family, gender, identity, race, sexism, class, politics, and power in her art. This photograph is from her series The Louisiana Project, commissioned in 2003 to commemorate the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase. In this series she uses photography, narrative, and video to delve into the social history of the Louisiana Purchase, casting herself in the image as a silent witness. In 2013, Weems received a MacArthur Fellowship as well as the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2015 she was the recipient of the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal at Harvard. In a New York Times review, critic Holland Cotter wrote, “Ms. Weems is what she has always been, a superb image maker and a moral force, focused and irrepressible.”