HW: Weekly Selfie 1 and Quotes

 

Leslie Ramirez, Hair Day, 2024

Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman Brushing Hair), 1990

I was inspired by this photo to do my selfie. For me, the kitchen table isn't just used to have meals in but to do my hair. I usually prefer my mom do my hair for me because it's our way of bonding even if we don't talk much. The table is where we can talk about our day or be there for each other.

Susan Strong excerpt from On Photography

1. “Photographs, which fiddle with the scale of the world, themselves get reduced, blown up, cropped, retouched, doctored, tricked out. They age, plagued by the usual ills of paper objects; they disappear; they become valuable, and get bought and sold; they are reproduced.”

- Photos are valuable for the memories they hold. Depending on its context; it can become a historical artifact or a precious memory we can’t remember. Photos can be easily ruined or misplaced if they’re not treated carefully. With phones, the only thing we need to worry about is making sure we have enough storage to keep taking pictures.

2. “While a painting or a prose description can never be other than a narrowly selective interpretation, a photograph can be treated as a narrowly selective transparency. But despite the presumption of veracity that gives all photographs authority, interest, and seductiveness, the work that photographers do is no generic exception to the usually shady commerce between art and truth.”

- Unless an artist has a photographic memory, a painting can never fully replicate something in the way a photo can. Over the years, cameras have evolved to capture lighting, color, and minor details. Photographers use different styles to capture a scene they want to express. Without context, viewers can come to their own conclusions about the photograph.

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

1. “Across the scenes, Weems changes roles as others join her in the room. She moves from lover to friend to mother and to herself, alone. She commands the stage—she plays a woman aware of the viewer, sometimes stealing a glance while others remain oblivious, at other times directly confronting the camera.”

-  Anything can happen in the dining room, as in Carrie Mae Weems’s “Kitchen Table Series”. In some photos, she is eating dinner with her husband and daughter, but it never shows them eating together as a family. For every scene, she plays a different role depending on who the person is. The strict mother, a loving wife, a good friend, and someone who is deeply troubled by something.

2. “Weems’s black-and-white photographs are like mirrors, each reflecting a collective experience: how selfhood shifts through the 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.”

-  I never thought of photographs as mirrors, but I understand what this quote is saying. There are many photos where Weems looks frustrated or stressed showing that motherhood can be difficult. With her lover, they looked like truly loved each other however they gradually drifted apart. Although events like these can take a toll, it doesn’t stop her from living her life.

How Carrie Mae Weems Rewrote the Rules of Image-Making

1. “Photography can enslave and revictimize, Weems has shown us; it can also, potentially, set us free from our inherited bias and expectations.”

-    I think this quote is talking about how photos without context can lead to misinterpretation and distorted from their original intent. With Weems's "Kitchen Table Series", the photos are easy to understand. She showed her audience how she acts with certain people and when she's at her lowest.

2. “OVER THE LAST two years, even those of us who might have once been able to delude ourselves into thinking that structures of power don’t really affect us have been made to see otherwise.”

- This quote caught my eye because it made me think about the illusion of choice and power. Weems talked about how she thought her parent’s divorce wouldn’t affect her as her father lives nearby. However, ever since that day, she couldn’t bring herself to make paintings or drawings. While we think we have full control of our lives, we can’t control outside factors that will affect us. Everyone experiences one unfortunate event in their lives and there’s only so much we can do to lessen the loss or pain.