Carrie Mae Weems Wins MacArthur Fellowship

Honorary Southern Photographer Carrie Mae Weems has been named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation.

Her Fellowship (the so-called "genius grant") recognizes her extraordinary achievements in photography and the visual arts and provides her five years of funding to ensure "maximum freedom to follow her own creative vision."

maximum freedom for recipients to follow their own creative vision. - See more at: http://www.macfound.org/press/press-releases/24-macarthur-fellows-announced/#sthash.DtNtYHvd.dpuf

The Foundation says that Weems was named a MacArthur Fellow because "in images that are lyrical and evocative, Weems unites critical social insight with enduring aesthetic mastery.

"Her signature works over three decades—Ain’t Joking (1987), The Kitchen Table Series (1990), From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995), The Louisiana Project (2004 -- see image above), Roaming (2006)—juxtapose the harsh realities of race, class, and gender discrimination with the dignity and resilience of the human character in everyday life.

"She enriches the traditional black-and-white cinéma vérité style with African American folklore, multimedia collage, and experimental printing methods, and in many of her prints, she casts herself as silent witness and guiding avatar through “fictional documentaries” in contemporary surroundings or historical recreations.

"Resurrecting lives and legacies invisible in plain sight, familiar but unseen, Weems creates a poignant and revealing visual archive of the human condition."

Despite the fact that Weems is Not From Around Here, she has worked here extensively. She says of her work:

In images that are lyrical and evocative, Weems unites critical social insight with enduring aesthetic mastery. Her signature works over three decades—Ain’t Joking (1987), The Kitchen Table Series (1990), From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995), The Louisiana Project (2004), Roaming (2006)—juxtapose the harsh realities of race, class, and gender discrimination with the dignity and resilience of the human character in everyday life. She enriches the traditional black-and-white cinéma vérité style with African American folklore, multimedia collage, and experimental printing methods, and in many of her prints, she casts herself as silent witness and guiding avatar through “fictional documentaries” in contemporary surroundings or historical recreations. Resurrecting lives and legacies invisible in plain sight, familiar but unseen, Weems creates a poignant and revealing visual archive of the human condition. - See more at: http://www.macfound.org/fellows/905/#sthash.GNjKciQu.dpuf

In images that are lyrical and evocative, Weems unites critical social insight with enduring aesthetic mastery. Her signature works over three decades—Ain’t Joking (1987), The Kitchen Table Series (1990), From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995), The Louisiana Project (2004), Roaming (2006)—juxtapose the harsh realities of race, class, and gender discrimination with the dignity and resilience of the human character in everyday life. She enriches the traditional black-and-white cinéma vérité style with African American folklore, multimedia collage, and experimental printing methods, and in many of her prints, she casts herself as silent witness and guiding avatar through “fictional documentaries” in contemporary surroundings or historical recreations. Resurrecting lives and legacies invisible in plain sight, familiar but unseen, Weems creates a poignant and revealing visual archive of the human condition. - See more at: http://www.macfound.org/fellows/905/#sthash.GNjKciQu.dpuf

 "My work has led me to investigate family relationships, gender roles, the histories of racism, sexism, class, and various political systems.

"Despite the variety of my explorations, throughout it all it has been my contention that my responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the roof-tops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specifics of our historic moment."

That, in my view, is an exceptionally powerful and challenging statement of the Southern photographer's project.

Weems' work in the South informs, enables, and ennobles us all.