Consider the subtle play of mouths and hands linking the central poster to the foreground figures. Invoking these layers in 1990, Weems raises questions concerning their legacy for art and life. By enfolding these icons in a Roy DeCarava–esque 1950s mood, Weems layers the photograph with traces of formative decades. These icons of the 1960s, blurred in the kitchen by a cigarette haze, elicit memories of turbulent race relations on New York streets. Using racism and fears of miscegenation to make a joke, the Winogrand photograph exemplifies the troublesome role that humor plays in both exposing and perpetuating stereotype. To the right is a familiar photograph from 1967 by Garry Winogrand, showing a light-skinned woman and a dark-skinned man in Central Park carrying chimpanzees dressed like children. The photograph was taken in 1963, but the popular poster featuring it dates to 1967. At the center is an image of Malcolm X at a rally. The streets of New York also arrive via the photographs on the back wall. A history of many streets, of rural South and urban North, has seeped into the scene, which recalls, in smoky black and white, earlier meditations on exodus and hope. As agricultural products grown mainly in the South, they mix into this leisurely moment signs of labor, suffering, and migration. The peanuts, cigarettes, and whiskey tie the kitchen into a larger economy and its history. A bottle of whiskey, a pair of mostly emptied tumblers, a dish of peanuts, some discarded shells, and a cigarette pack: these things constellate into a still life, lit by the glowing bulb above. The second photograph in the sequence depicts the protagonist drinking and playing cards with a man. In the Kitchen Table Series, Carrie Mae Weems takes these issues on with verve.
It bears an improvisational capacity to bind subjects in shared experience, and to restore and refashion them in the midst of struggle. But the kitchen has a subtle power of its own. The kitchen is a delicate sanctuary, vulnerable to the threat of violence, and to the prejudice and fear that abound outside. The street presses into the kitchen, stocking shelves and burdening conversations.
Yet if such a history is worth writing, it is because these two places are by no means discrete. Emotional distance is routine on the street, but excruciating in the kitchen. If the city street is a place of random encounter, of hustle and protest, the kitchen is a place of intimate habit, of sharing and aroma. You could write a history of the twentieth century through that pairing. Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Man smoking), 1990 © the artist and courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York For the “Vision & Justice” issue, Aperture invited voices from the fields of theater, photography, and art history to reflect on one of her most iconic projects. Carrie Mae Weems combines performance and narrative to dynamic effect.
0 kommentar(er)
