It's very important for me to really use this body as a barometer of a certain kind of knowledge--to take the personal risk of exposing my own body in a certain kind of way. I can't ask anybody else to do something that I don't do first myself.
Carrie Mae WeemsIt's fair to say that black folks operate under a cloud of invisibility - this too is part of the work, is indeed central to [my photographs]... This invisibility - this erasure out of the complex history of our life and time - is the greatest source of my longing.
Carrie Mae WeemsHow you get work done is by exploiting yourself and your feelings, and sometimes people get in the way.
Carrie Mae WeemsSuddenly this camera, this thing, allowed me to move around the world in a certain kind of way, with a certain kind of purpose. (On receiving a camera for her twenty-first birthday)
Carrie Mae WeemsYou know, artists are influenced by other artists. We're all deeply influenced by what's around us; we don't make anything cold. Sometimes we think that we do. But within that, the most important part is that even though we're influenced, what are the levels of invention that we carry forth even as we've been influenced by something that's come before?
Carrie Mae Weems