UCLA

This dissertation examines the photography of Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953) and her exploration issues of power within race, class, and gender. It focuses on the period of 1978-1991, from her first major series, Family Pictures and Stories (1978-1984), to And 22 Million Very Tired and Very Angry People (1991). In these early years of her career, Weems explores junctures of identity while levying a critique of American culture and its structures of dominance and marginalization. In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and Second Wave Feminism of the 1970s, scholars—particularly women of color—began looking seriously at the intersectional nature of identity and how it manifests in culture and lived experience. These issues are the central themes Weems’s career, and by looking at her early explorations this study provides critical context for her body of work.

Chapter One examines Weems’s first major series, Family Pictures and Stories (1978-1984). In this work, Weems uses autobiography as ethnography along with American and photographic history to question the cultural invisibility of black people. In her manipulation of personal images and history, Weems questions the process of representation, its consequences, and the constructed nature of power. Chapter Two juxtaposes her late-1980s series Ain’t Jokin’ (1987-88) and Colored People (1989-90) to explore the black tradition of signifyin’ found throughout literature and art, a framework that shows how art and culture create layers of meaning. When Weems signifies in these two series, she plays with literal and metaphorical meanings of jokes and mental associations about or applied to black people. The final chapter evaluates the role of vernacular culture in three bodies of work, namely American Icons (1988-89), Then What? Photographs and Folklore (1990), and And 22 Million Very Tired and Very Angry People (1991). Each of these works use folklore—including oral traditions and utilitarian objects—to connect the dots between culture, race, and power. By transforming these objects into tools of political activism, Weems positions her work within a larger radical tradition.