Weekly Selfie 1 - Samantha Castro

Samantha Castro, Untitled, 2024

Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman and daughter with makeup), 1990

       For my selfie, I was inspired by this photograph from Carrie Mae Weems's "Kitchen Table Series"  I enjoy doing makeup it is a time you get to be by yourself and to express yourself. Though I am not in a communal space like the kitchen table and at a vanity, I consider both to be an intimate place. Both spaces allow for self-reflection and creativity.

 Susan Sontag’s excerpt from On Photography

 “In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing.”

This statement I thought was intriguing as I never thought of photographs in that way. I agree that photographs have been transformative in how we perceive our world. Photographs do open up viewers' outlooks even unconsciously, but when looking at photographs they are just still images that we can look at to examine and observe. We might not have noticed or deemed things to be worthy of our attention without it.

 “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power. A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating people to abstract the world into printed words, is supposed to have engendered that surplus of Faustian energy and psychic damage needed to build modern, inorganic societies.”

This passage at first I found to be confusing, however after breaking it down it is an interesting perspective on photography. When taking photographs we own this still image giving a sense of control over what is photographed and the perspective we created. It becomes our possession. “ A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating people to abstract the world into printed words…”  I thought it was interesting and true that now through this technology there is a disconnect from having these direct experiences, and instead having them through media like books, articles, and photographs. However, though photographs might take people away from these direct experiences they are still important that they can be accessible to everyone.

Revisiting Carrie Mae Weems’s Landmark “Kitchen Table Series” by Jacqui Palumbo for Artsy

  “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.”

This quote and seeing the images reminded me of a British show called Fleabag where the female protagonist navigates through life, and like Weems, she is aware of the viewer and even addresses the audience. The concept of breaking the fourth wall is interesting to a viewer because it makes the media a more immersive experience.

 “I knew that I was making images unlike anything I had seen before, but I didn’t know what that would mean,” she told W. “I knew what it meant for me, but I didn’t know what it would mean historically.”

I agree with Weems that when creating art you won’t know exactly what it’s supposed to mean or if it has a meaning at all. Sometimes, you won't know if what you're creating will have an impact on others. But because those photographs weren’t anything she hadn’t seen before gives more reason why she had to make them.

NY Times: How Carrie Mae Weems Rewrote the Rules of Image-Making

  “It’s the series that made her career and inspired a new generation of artists who had never before seen a woman of color looking confidently out at them from a museum wall, and for whom Weems’s work represented the first time an African-American woman could be seen reflecting her own experience and interiority in her art.”

Representation is hugely important as it can empower a new generation of artists. Seeing a woman of color, like Carrie Mae Weems, confidently showcased in a museum it redefines whose stories are deemed worthy of attention and inclusion in the art world. The representation not only validates identities but it sparks creativity, inspiring others to see themselves in art and motivating future artists to claim their space.

 “Over the years, Weems has revisited in her work the age she was then — 8, 9, 10, a girl still in the process of becoming herself, with a dawning adult awareness of the world and a self-assurance made all the more poignant with the knowledge that it won’t survive adolescence wholly intact.”

Weems’ reflection on her childhood looking back on her artwork as a child is incredibly relatable, I believe now, especially for young women who seem to often long to relive the simplicity of their early years. Many revisit that nostalgia, like wearing bows or embracing childhood elements, as a way to reclaim a sense of innocence and self-assurance that fades with adolescence. It’s a desire to return to a time before growing up complicated everything.