Carrie Mae Weems Pictures, Essay Example

Introduction

Carrie Mae Weems is a socially motivated artist and photographer. Born in Oregon in 1953, she originally studied modern art but got involved in the Labour movement of the 1970’s. She originally used photography for personal and political documentation but gradually evolved into a form of both aesthetic and intellectual expression. In 1981, she earned a degree in Fine arts and a master’s degree in the same field in 1984. As a photographer, she deals mostly in African American subjects and models.

Works

Weems is the artist behind a series of photographs known as “Not Manet’s Type.” They were shot and processed in1997. They depict a very personal style with a political edge to it that flies in the face of the formalistic nature of art. This style, however, was very common to the photographers of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

These photographs depict a female nude taken through a mirror. The figure is posing either by standing with her back towards the camera, seated with her knees drawn up to her chest. In each of the photographs, the nude is a self-portrait with what may be termed as a sardonic commentary of both the objectification and the absence of a black woman’s body in the running history of modern art. The commentary in the picture explains what the artist wants the audience to perceive of the picture.  Her pose combined with the picture are meant to display a sad story of a man who uses a woman, and although she knows it, she is helps towards stopping him.

Weems’ expansive portfolio employs not only photographs, but sound, fabric and textures to examine and analyze gender and class issues through both personal experience and African American heritage. Using the skill and delivery of a master storyteller, she uses forms that could be described as colloquially narrative such as songs, idioms, and jokes. In her photography. These series often expose and scrutinize hysterical stereotypes and subjectivity. Weems often discredits sexist and racial labels, while examining the relationship between aesthetics and power. She also uses biography and portraiture of a personal nature in order to address broader social truths.

The dinner party

In The Dinner party, the writer, Mona Gardner pieces together an incredible amount of literal work that includes or brings together a carefully planned and constricted conflict, a clever display of characters and a resolution considered surprising by many. All these factors are displayed in such a manner that brings out the theme in her work that shows the difference in the level of self-control that everybody has inconsiderate of gender. The whole story is based in India, where a dinner party, meant to bring together a group of people, is taking place. The first conflict in the work begins when one of the guests makes a remark that offends the opposite sex. Another guest, spots a cobra, but insists on the others to exercise their self-control until they spot it. When the cobra finally goes out of the picture, the host of the party, who had been offended by the sexist remarks made by the colonel, acknowledges to the colonel that his remark, however, sexist it might have been, contained merit in it.

However, as the host continues to acknowledge the sentiments made by the colonel, it is discovered that the hostess knew all along of the cobra, because, as she explains, it passed by her legs. This statement proves that the colonel’s remarks were untrue. According to the hostess, everybody has a unique amount of self-control. This discovery is proved right in Gardner’s work through three elements namely conflict, characterization and resolution.

In her writing, the author makes use of two central components to prove that self-control is different and unique to everybody. The two elements are the calmness displayed by the hostess even after she realises there is a snake under her foot, and the careless remarks made by the colonel. According to the sentiments that had been made by the colonel, women have no self-control and cannot be compared to men and in the occasion they have the self-control needed, man always have more than them at any given time. However, as much as the author’s depiction on the sentiments might be true, regarding the varying difference in self-control in everybody, one can concede that, to some degree that the colonel’s sentiments might be true. One of the main attributes about this piece is the manner in which the author takes conflict and makes of it the main theme in the story.

Her ability to induce into the reader the running conflict without coming out, as leaning to one gender is what makes her work incredible. In addition, her use of characters to both introduce the conflict and the resolution, sets the stage for a classical literal work that can be defined as being genius. Her language use also emphasises on the point that she wants to pass across to the audience. Most audience are pulled to her work because of the manner in which she combines all the elements together to bring out a beautiful piece of literature