Kitchen Table Series
CARRIE MAE WEEMS
CARRIE MAE WEEMS, 1990
Radically simple, Carrie Mae Weems’ portraits, known as the Kitchen Table Series, offer a picture of universality. In 1989, Weems began setting up her camera at the end of the kitchen table, a single hanging light and a door frame behind her the only other decoration. Over the next year, she took portraits of a fictional life, a romance leading to a break-up, sadness leading to contentment. Within her four walls, it is hard not to see our own. The minutiae and mundanity of everyday existence becomes something profound and palpable in Weems’ images. As she says, ‘This woman can stand in for me and for you; she can stand in for the audience, she leads you into history. She’s a witness and a guide.’