Observation:
In all three pictures, Weems is with her (implied) daughter
around the kitchen table. There is an overhead lamp that gives the room the
sense being put on a spotlight. The three tables each have a book in front of
the centermost chair, a sheet of paper to the left of the book (from our point
of view), and another sheet of paper adjacently placed to the right of the
book. In the leftmost picture, Weems is reading silently while her daughter
stands in the background with her arms crossed. The daughter is covered by the
shadows, while Weems sits predominantly in the foreground. The second picture
has the daughter stepped closer to the table, now in the light, and Weems is
now standing to the side of the chair. The daughter’s arms are no longer
crossed. The third picture features Weems sitting in her original position,
only now her hand is positioned over the sheet of paper and her daughter is
sitting to the right, working alongside her.
Inference:
This set of photos appears to be about redefining the role
of women in the kitchen. For centuries, woman have been associated with the
kitchen and the household, but here the two women are featured reading and
writing—an indirect quest for knowledge. In an interview, Weems directly states
that the Kitchen Table series of photographs is about roles in society:
I use my own constructed image as a
vehicle for questioning ideas about the role of tradition, the nature of
family, monogamy, polygamy, relationships between men and women, between women
and their children, and between women and other women—underscoring the critical
problems and the possible resolves. In one way or another, my work endlessly
explodes the limits of tradition. I’m determined to find new models to live by
(Bey 1).
Here Weems is ‘modeling’ for her daughter as a hardworking
individual as she continues her studies. As Weems gave birth to her daughter at
age sixteen, she could have given up her ambitions to take on a motherly role,
but she did not. She raised her daughter alongside her boyfriend (at the time)
while also pursuing her dream of becoming a photographer. The photograph series
takes those ambitions and shows them being instilled into a younger generation,
as opposed to instilling 'womanly' ideals that imposed by society.
While Weems takes very simple and mundane concepts for her
photographs, they still carry profound meaning when paired together with
others. As stated by Deborah Willis in her essay Photographing Between
the Lines: Beauty, Politics, and the Poetic Vision of Carrie Mae Weems: “One
of the many attractions of Weems’s work is her use of cinematic techniques…
Weems reimagines [the actors’] images through the soft-focus representation of
their sensual, iconic, and constructed poses, evoking the past” (Willis 38)
Each picture acts as a still-frame in a film--a single moment in time that
tells a story after putting them in sequence with each other. The story here is
of a daughter observing her mother from a distance, expressing interest in her
mother's work, and then joining her mother as they begin to work together. This
is a simplified version of what is probably a more profound message, but the
impact of that message still holds weight all the same.
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