Category: HW1: Finding Your Voice (Page 1 of 3)

Black American photographer Dawoud Bey is known largely for his portrayal of black lives through the lens of his camera. Hoping to change the narrative of how communities of color were viewed Bey would lend his perspective to create still images that were moving and powerful with depth and a sense of intimacy to the subjects he photographed. Starting his career in 1970s Harlem as a street photographer he became reknown for his style and subject matter with his outlook hoping to ‘reshape the world, one person at a time. With much success Bey turned his eye to creating images with much deeper perspectives and meaning behind them. Moving away from faces and figures he turned to landscapes with a focus on where the Underground Railroad trails followed. Viewing these as a ‘radical reimagining of history’ he chose the viewpoint from the runaway slaves eyes and how they would see the landscape in that time. I found his perspective fascinating, the way he chose to shoot the photos was such a deep connection to history and when looking at them you could easily imagine what the runaway slaves may have felt in the dark of night running for their freedom and their lives.

Carrie Mae Weems, a black female photographer, celebrated for her Kitchen Table Series from her own life in the 1990s. Her Kitchen Table Series is as straightforward as the title suggests but exudes a much more complex perspective into the life of the American family — the black American family— the life of a black woman in America. Her series explores the social living arrangement of her everyday life of being a woman as well as interacting with pets, children, and lovers. It seeks to challenge the stereotypes of what these social contracts expect us to accept as universal as ‘normal’. The viewpoint from the kitchen table, I believe, helps to accentuate the scenes she has created for her viewers, whether tense, inviting, engaging, fun etc, lending a familiar setting that anyone can relate to being in at one point or another in their lives.

Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems are both very wonderful photographers of their fields and what I see that is similar between the two is the intimacy they create with their images. The stereotypes they help dismantle through the black American perspective is profound and helps establish a narrative other Americans of different ethnicities and races may not have noticed otherwise. How I think they differ is in their subjects, while they both have similar stories when viewing their images they are from different perspectives. Carrie photographs herself and her family from a familiar staged setting but with wide ranging atmospheres while Dawoud photographs others and captures their intimacy in their natural environment on the streets. I think the power of photography is beyond words, as they say a photo is worth a thousand words, but to try to capture that meaning would be something along the lines of the narratives that are told and the multiple perspectives that can be found from just one photo. The stories that photos hold help inform and educate generations for decades after. 

Dawoud Bey started as a street photographer capturing life in the 1970’s in harlem.He showed how black were portrayed through art and in popular culture.He wanted his images to showcase a deeper meaning as if one could see the soul of African Americans.“Night Coming Tenderly, Black” is one of Bey exhibitions at the art institute which shows the history of the underground railroad. The photographs that were shown were to give a glimpse through the eyes of the  runaway slaves in the 1800s.When looking at the images there are no human silhouettes shown through the dark and gloomy images.He wanted people to see and feel how it figurative slaves had to navigate in the night. As Dawoud Bey said “Making the invisible, visible”.He wanted to remind people that no matter what time period there are people are still trying to get to their version of freedom.Both of Dawoud Bey projects had strong meaning but the one the stood out to me more was the 1963 Bombing of the 16th street baptist church in alabama. ”The Birmingham Project” Exhibition paired  pictures of children of the same age of the victims and the others of adults to show victims if they were alive today.Dawoud Bey portraits gave me chills because when anyone bring up slavery it can change anyone emotions drastically but Bey made me smile because as i looked at the photographs it made me want to look back at the kids and images how i would see them today. Dawoud Bey projects make you really feel what he is saying through his photographs, that is his voice.Because of Bey hearing loss the camera became an extension of his eyes and even his voice. Art gives a person an experience they never had before.

Carrie Mae Weems uses photography as a voice for women and to show the living arrangement between both men and women.She wanted people to see that  women hold the keys to generations and men to power.Her kitchen table project was done in her own kitchen, to her it was something she can do in her own space that she chose to do.It was to show the conflicts that arose within a family household it was basically a Battle between the sexes all done in Black and white.The kitchen table project had many photographs but the one that 

caught my eyes with her face down in her knees with a bottle of what looks like wine  ,a wine glass and an ashtray on the table. I like this image because it shows pain and not any kind of pain but pain that no one can help you through, the pain that you have to get through by yourself in a shared house. The images show a woman taking a moment to gather her thoughts because everyone looks up to her, she is supposed to be strong as Carrie Mae Weems said women hold the keys to the generation.

Both have similar techniques, they both wanna have a deeper meaning by showing what is going on inside a person rather than outer appearances, they both show pain. Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems  both photograph in balck and white but are slightly different in that one captures what’s going on outside and the other captures what’s going on inside the four walls.

In the interview with Dawoud Bey, Bey approaches the idea of using photography as a way of finding his voice. A good example will be with the exhibition “Night Coming Tenderly, Black”. The idea of the exhibition is to reimagine the history of the underground railroad by having viewers be placed on unidentified places, such as the woods or field areas in the dark. As Bey mentions “I’m trying to imagine them through the eyes of fugitive slaves moving through the landscapes under cover of darkness”. One of Bey’s work that stood out to me aside from the photograph he took by Lake Erie, was the photograph Untitled #2 (Trees and Farmhouse), 2017. What I enjoy about this photograph is the fact that there is a house in the background, and front of the house is a tree then there is another tree right in front of us almost blocking the way near the center of the image making it look like a pattern in some way. Anyone looking at this image gets the feeling as if they are standing right in front of the tree. Let’s not forget how the image is in black and white giving an idea of how dark it is at that moment.
After seeing the interview with Carrie Mae Weems, Mae approaches the use of photography to find her voice, for instance, the kitchen table project. The kitchen table series involves different moments that happened in one specific space or place in time. The photographs usually involved a woman who demonstrates different scenarios with her family, lover, children, and friends and also how their relationship changes. One of Mae’s photographs that stood out for me was when both of her friends were supporting her. The image demonstrates she’s going through some difficult times and both her friends are supporting her. What helps support the idea is the use of lighting Mae kept throughout her series, which demonstrates how tense the situation can be. Another will be that they remained in black and white photographs but is what helps give the idea of saving or remembering a memory of a specific time and place.
Both Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems approach photography to find their voice by remembering the past, our history. Both also gave the same atmosphere through the use of black and white. Yet both differ as Bey will usually express his ideas through photographing other people or places as expressing their emotions yet with Mae, she used herself to portray her own emotions and you can feel them through her photographs of the kitchen table series. Thinking about how both Bey and Mae showed their voice through photography does prove how photography has the power, as Bey said “to re-shape the world”. I do believe photography can help change the world by conveying a message. To do so, the viewer has to be open-minded to see the photographers’ point of view another will be on how it can connect the viewer with the photograph for a moment.

Jamir Campbell

Dawoud Bey is an American Photographer and educator known for his large-scale art photography and street photography portraits , including Americans in relation to their community. Dawound Bey believes Photography could be a part of perpetuating images that were part of the problem or photography could be used in a way that proposed solution. He also believes in the saying “you’re either part of the problem or part of the solution” basically what he means , is if your art isn’t purposeful or making a point about what’s currently going on in the world then your apart of the problem. Realize that even as an artist or a photographer you can be part of the problem or part of the solution and to try to figure out what exactly does that mean. So, there are certain kinds of images out there that actually feed into a certain kind of stereotype that reinforces the problem or you can make those kinds of images that in a more honest way that changes those stereotypes. Those images and representations can become part of the solution in a way by using the camera to pose an alternate proposition. So that is the way I thought about it. One of his projects I would like to talk about is the Dawoud Bey’s Birmingham project is a deeply felt and abstractly rich tribute to the victims of the 16th street Baptist church bombing in the city of Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963. During this time, the Ku Klux Klan deployed dynamite in the lower ground floor of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, a venue that had been previously used the headquarters for Martin Luther King Jr’s anti-segregationist protests. The explosion killed four girls who were getting ready for Sunday service the photo series, created in 2012, features images of the church community, each having fifty years between them. Every diptych has a young person the same age as one of the victims of the 1963 hate crimes, paired with another of an adult 50 years older. This signifies the age of the child had they been alive today. The picture I liked from this project was the Fred Stewart II and Tyler Collins, 2012 photo they were side by side. Most of the pictures in this series include a 50-year-old person and a kid who is the of age of the kids who died in the explosion. I think these pictures in black and white give off a lot of emotion. The subjects in the series never met each other. Bey took their portraits separately and only paired them after. This could be through their gestures or expressions, the composition, or even personal aspects. Bey tried to make two works resonate closely in relation to the other. This tone strengthens the nostalgia and the emotional effect of the diptychs.

Artist Carrie Mae Weems has used photography to explore national and personal history, using herself and her family as stand-ins to explore common narratives, and using the medium as a tool to challenge stereotypes. Carrie Mae said that this series was not only for African American Women, but women in general. I think this series expressed, What’s the life of a woman in relationship to a family, in relationship to a man, to children, to her friends and to herself. The picture I found most interesting was the Woman and daughter with makeup from Kitchen Table Series. A woman and daughter sit at the kitchen table. The woman investigates her vanity mirror as she applies lipstick; the daughter copies her mother’s pose with her own mirror and lipstick. Although they are not looking at each other, they are synchronized in a shared act. In this seemingly intimate moment between mother and daughter, the woman is, in effect, teaching her daughter the gestures of femininity. I think Carrie Mae Weems and Dawoud Bey have a lot of things in common. They both do a great job at using their photography to express themselves and talk about the problems that exist in today’s world. They mostly use African American when taking their photos. Carrie Mae Weems uses her photos to talk from a women perspective, while Dawound Bey uses his photos to express how everyone feels in a certain community.  Carrie Mae Weems photos are set up in her kitchen, while Dawound bey does not stage his pictures he allows his subjects to be free.