Focus 580; Carrie Mae Weems: A Reflection on My Work

In this hour of focus 580 We're talking with artist Carrie Mae Weems. She is one of the best known and most honored artists of her generation. She is a photographer primarily but saying that gives you a limited idea of what it is she does if you're not familiar with her work. It has been anthologized. She was here to give a talk on the UVA campus yesterday so some people certainly will know about her and if not you can go out and you can see her work it is available published in books. She has been her work has been shown all over the country and one person shows and shows with other artists she's done also a lot of teaching and talking about her work. And it all one way or another deals with issues of race and racism and of the African-American experience both using archival images and her own photographs. And I'm very pleased that she be here and talk a little bit about herself and her work. And as we talk as always questions from people who are listening are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well thank you very much for being here.

You're welcome thanks for inviting me. You have been a photographer have been taking pictures for a long time now for a long time. What is it about the photograph that you find appealing. It's so immediate. It's immediacy. It's an extraordinary ability to underscore the moment I think is Carty a response it to record the decisive moment. But but there's something about the immediacy and about the world photograph that interests me very much this ability to take a slice of life and to to pinpoint it to articulate it to give it a certain kind of volume to elevate the every day that interest me very much. And so photography immediately became my my muse and little guide there. You mentioned the thing that always strikes me about his pictures when I look at them is that

they both seem beautifully composed and also candid. I don't know how it is you do that. I guess the heed he knew how to do that. I think you could see that. I see that in your photographs too actually you know Brazil is a very interesting character because as much as he was very much interested in documentary photography and as much as we think of him as a documentarian in fact he really was and he really was a man who composed a great many of his photographs. I can pose a great many of my photographs and like personify I take hundreds hundreds and hundreds of photographs trying to organize the world in a certain kind of way. So in some ways you know we talk about photographs as being true but I actually think of them more as being articulating a certain kind of truth that is organized and

orchestrated by the will of the photographer. I think that's that's something that we forget about photography because you see the you see the one image of photographer has chosen that does everything that he or she hopes you can do and you don't see the. You don't see all the others that they prayed and looked and saw. And they say they threw down on the floor in the dark when you know there's this really great story about another one of my favorite photographers. I have many royalty Corrado who is one of the the great great great photographers of of America and also Eugene Smith. And one day a friend of mine who was working for Life magazine went into the office it was Christmas he was falling out with his wife. He was sure that they were going to be divorcing he any time soon. And he decided that he just had to get out of the house on Christmas morning and he goes into Life magazine office early early in the morning maybe about 8:00 o'clock and he's there until about 10:00 o'clock at night thinking that he was the only person of course working in the building on Christmas Day about 10 o'clock.

Eugene Smith a photographer stumbles out of the darkroom. And and he looks at John and he says John how I look I'm glad to see it come on. Come on into the dark when I want to I want to ask your advice on something. And so John fruit's gets up and he walks into the dark room in life stark room was huge and you know was that a dark room of major photographers. They walk into the dark room and from floor to ceiling from floor to ceiling hundreds of photographs all of the same prints printed differently. And Eugene Smith looked at him after a few minutes and he said. Which one do you like best. Yeah. The art of photography. You know the art of making a composing and knowing that you know anything can be manipulated in the darkroom.

And of course now with today's digital technologies that there seems to be almost no limit to what you can do which which gets us into some real questioning about this feeling that we've had for such a long time that that if a photograph is true. Right. Well you know there was this idea again that a photograph is true like there was the idea that a photograph is worth a thousand words. But as a friend asked me one day when I was deeply interested in documentary photography and about to make some changes he said Well which thousand are you talking about specifically. What is the truth that you're talking about specifically and so I think that that the thing that is important about about understanding photographs it's that they articulate a truth not necessarily that they are true but that they articulate a truth. And that's different. And and that is perhaps for the greatest photographs. They're a very special power that they elevate

us they move us to something closer to our human needs to know and our desire to understand something more profoundly photographs painting dance music can help us in that way to eliminate the depths of human desire. Our guest in this hour folks 580 photographer Kerry may whims questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. What do you want your art to do. That's probably changed over the years. You know when you're younger you think that you'll change the world through what you make your intervention. I'm very much interested in ideas of illumination. Revealing revealing emotions revealing deeper understanding complex

meaning I want them to be the source of beauty and inspiration. I want them to saying I want them to make you cry. I want them to make you feel something that you have always felt but weren't quite sure of how to talk about or describe. Like when I read something great by Toni Morrison. Four Hundred Years of Solitude. You know those sort of great great great books of our time that completely elevate your emotional understanding of what's possible. And so while I don't view myself as being a great artist by any means. I think that to a certain extent some of the work is important in that it allows for an opening of dialogue and discussion around a number of complex issues whether they are

study issues or issues of cultural social importance. So I have to differ with you in saying that I don't think of my work as being about race. I think I talked about this actually a little bit yesterday and in the talk. I think it's much more about the complicated the complicated relationships that that humanity is trying to balance for itself. And so while it might not be about race it certainly can be about racism sometimes and occasionally but that's not really the main thrust of the work. I guess one of the odd ideas or one of the things that I'm struck by when I have read some of the things you've said and some of the things other people have said about your work is that you want both for it to say something you want to be provocative you want to make people think but you also wanted to be beautiful. Yeah I'm I'm a real you know I'm a real sucker for puti.

It's also the point of entry. You know it's like a beautiful dress and a lovely woman a great pair of earrings or something that's delicate. It allows entry. It's a point of entry. And so I used those sort of a static term that a static term that the aesthetic term of beauty is in that way so it's not at all for beauty for beauty sake or for its own sake but rather for the ability to pull the audience into a space that it might not otherwise want to go because the issues that I'm dealing with in the work are kind of sometimes a rather complex and are not really the things that people are really rushing out to see on a lovely day. Do you know what I mean. So it's so. So how do you get people to come to the work to negotiate the work to the trust that there is something for them to be found in the work. And and I think that is in part beauty is a thing that starts to get us

there. It's like the cover of this book that we're looking at the sort of beautiful beautiful beautiful black boy blue black boy and sort of way of status sizing. A problem an issue an issue. So yeah I do it all the time and I'm trying to do it better all the time. So you know there is something about you know you know trying to beautify beautifying ugly world that it's really interesting trying to figure out the static range that's possible while we examine the sort of mess of our lives. But I suppose like the great myths of you know of the you know the ancient world. I mean they were dealing with these very complex issues and subjects of incest and violence and homosexuality and death and and all of course in the sort of really beautiful beautiful arena of the theatre and a profound sense of language and costume and

gesture and light. But to do with very very complicated issues and so to that extent I'm really no different I think than a great number of artists. What you did a series of photographs the kitchen table series. And this is something that I think some people will know and really. Kind of second kind of set it kind of made you we really established you it was sort of the first really big thing that caused people to I think take notice of your series of photographs. They're all taken from the same perspective that is the viewer it's like you're looking down a long table and the people that are in the picture are are at the other end and there is a light that hangs over the table and that appears to be the source of light in the picture. Now actually I think one of the one of the things that strikes me about those pictures is the use of light and shadow is just it just knocks me out that it's there so wonderfully let. What was the light over the table the only light that you used or did or did you you or did you use otherwise.

I have to answer you have to believe my secret you know. Well you know actually your table was was it remains for me one of my favorite favorite bodies of work and I return to it again and again and and you know the interesting thing is that you know I have a very small house with very small walls and I usually don't get a chance to engage or interact with my work unless unless it's hanging someplace I see it in exhibition and I think oh I made that that's so interesting. What a wonderful thing what a wonderful piece of work and. And somehow I happen to think that what what an extraordinary thing. But your table was something that I worked on constantly over the course of maybe four five months I worked on it every single day and arranging the arranging it really trying to understand what I wanted the world to look like how I wanted that room to feel and what it the

ambience the mood all of those things I kept sort of chipping away at and so yes I came up with this overall light of I call it the light of interrogation that spills across that that table as this woman plays out a series of relationships between. Women women and women and women and men and women and children and women alone. It was a very light of interrogation spilling on that scene or those scenes scenarios Ted blows was of real importance. But in order to get a kick kick kick of light there was another there was a small small room just adjacent to the main room. And so I turned that on and it just sort of gave me just tiny bit of fill in order to balance into the other room. I also used a very very very slow shutter speed for those for those images too.

So but yeah there's there's a key light which is that the main might in the picture and then the sort of tiny light that's off to the side. Yeah it's really beautiful. There they are really beautiful. They're really beautiful and just trying to describe them doesn't do them justice. People have to go and see the pictures and you you were in all the pictures are you. Yes I am. I started using myself. Oh probably I've used myself often and I think of them as being rather performative though I'm not really performing performing or acting out. Carry me when she's really not the subject that I'm interested in. But but I use my body in order to explore other ideas about. And in order to empathize with other people in other situations I use my own body to understand what it feels like to be placed in that in a particular situation. So I've been using

myself for a long time in the kitchen table series in recent work that I've done in Cuba in ritual and revolution in the Jefferson suite in the Hampton project someplace in the body of Carrie Mae Weems as always sort of interspersed in that work leading leading the viewer or leading the viewer really through the work and I think I use her as a kind of muse the physicality as a kind of muse to assist the audience in locating itself in her. So that is you have as the audience you have a body to project on to that can carry the weight of the burden that you are interested in projecting or you know the burden of your desire. If you were taking a portrait it seems to me that there are some photographs that I would say were portraits. You're taking a picture of a another person. How do you think about that.

Approaching the idea of a of a portrait maybe that's really not the not the word that you would you would apply. But that's what that's what it seems like to me. Well I've been interested in documentary portraiture for a long time that I started out making lots of documentary portraits environmental portraits rather. But I don't quite understand the gist of your question. Well I guess as is yours if you're thinking I have this person say you're taking picture person and I have some idea where I want to place them in terms of the setting and the background and the framing. And I don't know if you see if you would say anything to them if you tell if you tell them anything about what it is you're looking for or you just say here just we just sit there please and I'm wondering how you how you think about composing the image. It depends. I don't I don't make so many portraits

at the moment I've been doing in still photography have been doing more video in film recently where I of course clearly direct and direct the subject. But but the same thing has been pretty much true also in the still photographs that I've made when I was when I was younger again under this idea of there being sort of the sort of objective truth about the photograph. Then of course I made numerous environmental portraits sort of shot from the hip in the sort of way in which all the famous documentarians did it was a way of working and then I thought well I only really like working this way. I mean I really do like composing the world and I like my subject understanding what it is that I'm after and that and that there and this needs to be a collaboration between the sitter and the photographer in order to really make something dynamic happen.

And so I'm much more involved now of course in asking in engaging the subject engaging and assuming that we're working in collaboration with me of course having the the ultimate trump because I'm the photographer afterall. You're not doing as much. Things like what I think about the Georgia Sea Island series where you're photographing places and you know there are no people in there so you're photographing objects and buildings and things like like that. And I guess I'm also sort of interested in how you approach the difference in approach. If you were going to take a picture of a person or if you're going to take a pic a picture of that person's house how how you would think differently about what you're what you're looking for or what you want to have in the in the picture. Well you know it goes I think in some ways it's it goes back to the first question that you asked which has to do with with photographic truth. There are for me there are a couple of things that have to happen first of all have to be absolutely honest with myself. I have to be absolutely honest with myself. And then I have to be absolutely honest with the sitter.

That I'm not violating you that I'm not taking something from you in a way that is exploitative and dismissive and using you for my own my own purpose. So I approach then a subject's home in the same way that I approach them that I am looking for the integrity that is located there. What is the integrity here. Why am I looking here what am I hoping to extract from this. Who do I need to show this to for what reason am I making this image those are the kinds of questions that I'm asking myself in Leslie and they're very demanding questions. And again at the end of the day I have to sleep with me. Have I done right by this person. Have I done right by this situation. Have I been truthful in the way in which I have described the making of this image

right. So that I'm not moving things around I'm not I'm not placing trailers in places that they wouldn't be or attempting to denigrate it in any kind of way. I'm not sneaking up on the subject I'm not interested in sneaking. I'm interested in having them know that I'm there and that I'm asking for a certain amount of permission to to use their image in a way that they would appreciate. And that's very important to me. It's one of the reasons that I think I moved away from the documentary photography earlier because there was something about it that was somewhat pejorative in that it had to do with running out into the world and capturing the ethnic image and then bringing back as a kind of trophy. I I had to reject that I didn't like that idea at all and I didn't want to participate as an artist in that in that way. There had to be another. Another way of having a

conversation and including images certain of people in the dialogue that would be representative of them and respectful of them at the same time. I was actually looking at a photograph this morning in the newspaper. Really really upsetting really disturbing. It's an image of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown and the caption reads something like you know both of them are really trying to get it together and sort of pull their lives together. But the but the photograph of course completely cuts them. Bobby is this sort of sort of drugged out a higher level thing and Whitney is just sort of you know smiling Barbie Drew. It was just so weird. The power of the image you know riding against the text. Well and that's something that we really haven't talked about that you also would use a lot in your work combining images and text so it's not so that's OSA back to the beginning of say well if you're

say you're a photographer. Well yes your photographer but but there's more there's more to what you do then then photography and part is taking image and text and putting those two things together in a way that creates something that is more than just that you know more than the proverbial sum of the parts. You know I'm I'm I'm a terrible writer. Right. But I'm doing it anyway. I mean I don't you know I just keep going. And so you know so yes I've been adding I've been playing with language and words for a very very long time and using them in association with photographs. So as I said yesterday in the lecture sometimes that the text is on plates sometimes they're on the rug sometimes they're floating up above the photographs on and silken than Or sometimes they are imprinted in the photograph sometimes they're under the photograph and that's me so I so I've played with a number of different strategies for for placing text in relationship to two images hopefully

always engaging them both so that in fact I think one could for instance I think kitchen table you could in fact simply read the story of kitchen table and you would walk away with a very particular and very concise short story about a man about a woman trying to figure out their relationship in a you know in a world that claims to be monogamous but isn't you know one that you know claims to embrace the nuclear family but doesn't. So you so you know so it's so on the one hand you can do that and on the other you could simply just deal with the photographs as interesting photographs that appear in relationship with one another as depicted depicts in trip ticks and sometimes single panels as well. So the idea of building installation using sound in image and text has been an ongoing issue and I've been working in this way for about 15 years and more recently I decided that it would be much more interesting for me to begin to use aspects of my

own voice and working with various couldn't posers in order to really begin to orchestrate sound so that I started building the building room installations room environments that no longer incorporated text in the way that I had been doing it for the last 15 years but simply using the voice as the is the text roll out element to activate space and to activate the room. And again sometimes pushing against what you see you know what is that. The relationship always examine the relationship between the image and and the sound and the text. Those that tension is something that I'm very much interested in. We're about midway through here our guest is Carrie I'm a whimsical photographer. Her work is very well known she's shown all over the country she has taught at many universities. There are collections of her work if you're interested in seeing it. She's here visiting the campus gave a talk yesterday in the Miller com series The last one for this semester. And we're pleased that she could be here talking with us and if you have questions or comments you should feel free to call us.

3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We do have someone to talk with in Urbana right here on the line number one. Oh yes things I'm curious about you. I would hurt your talk yesterday which was wonderful and you mentioned photographers that you were you know very much influenced by and I've been very interested in the work of PH Polk for a long time. Especially his series called old characters. Oh yes I love that book. Yeah but I wonder what you thought about it because his work in some ways just listening to your talk yesterday it reminds me of your work in that he's been documenting a series of of black rural people living in Alabama and yes and they seem to tell a story. But I mean he's the one I was really trying to get at is that sometimes he left them untitled in some time. He gave me a pipe like that for the boss.

Yes that was it. But you know actually the name of that series it's called the vanishing Negro always. It's called the vanishing negro home and when I was a young girl and I was a young girl which is not terribly long I had the pleasure I decided that it was very important to like do a series of interviews with photographers around the country. And so somehow or another I convinced somebody to give me some money so I could jump on a train or a bus or whatever and go visit people and one of the people I went to visit was ph both in Alabama and spent this amazing week with him doing a series of interviews and talking to him about what he was trying to do as an artist and why he thought it was so important to do this series of photographs and was deeply moved by him and very much respected what he was trying to do. So when I sat with him to talk to him about this book vanishing

negro. He said You know I was sitting in my house. And I saw this woman coming down the street. The boss I saw her coming down the street and I said to myself that this way of life is changing. And in another 20 years there will be no more evidence of this. I have to make a record. And so he ran outside literally and drugged this woman back into his house back into his studio. And composed her poster he said OK. Now what I want you to do is you know I want you to turn this way I want you to look this way and I want you to put your hands on your hips. And he made that great great photograph which hangs in my kitchen. Yeah I've got one in mind. Do you really. That's great. Yeah he was he was very important to me and as I mentioned earlier it was very important to me and Robert Frank was very important to

me. But you know I just have to comment with one quick comment and that is I think he may have done a little damage by calling her often and making her you know because that image is everywhere. And unfortunately I think people have that's one of the minister types for black women. You know and I'm in a way if that is true and I accepted and I I think about it a lot. But on the other hand like he has embraced that permanent image in everybody's imagination and it's something black women have to struggle against. You know I think some of them do. Well you know that woman looks like my grandmother. And so I embrace it. OK. I'm not really worried about you know it's a very interesting question that you've raised because I don't think of it frankly as being a stereotypical image. I do think that though that it is an archetype image and that he has elevated her

to almost a mythic figure who one who walks with the Giants a woman who hopefully can be in control as much as possible in control of her life and so for me what he does is to elevate the black female subject as opposed to giving us yet another a kind of ancient mime a stereotype that weakens her. And so I think that the people that think of her as being stereotypic have a very very limited understanding of what stereotypes are and certainly what you know you can also look at it this way that they're both negative and positive stereotypes as well. There's the so-called And that didn't work at the Arden. And the thing that saddened me when I went that was a statement on the wall that some of his works are damaged and lost now because you know he didn't have any way to preserve them or something and I walked through the exhibit and it was just really really powerful from a good

picture. But I was just wondering about your thoughts on the preservation of black work. Well you know the issues of preservation I think continued to be a problem not just for photography but painting and sculpture and and so forth and so finding the proper archive to store the work is it's an ongoing question it's certainly one that I that I have right now. What am I going to do with the work where is it going to be store where is it going to be treated treated properly. And but it is an ongoing issue an ongoing problem. There were some very exciting. To preserve a legacy a very interesting exhibition that circulated a few years ago that was very specifically about the preservation of African-American materials. That means that African-Americans too I think really need to step up to the plate and began to give money to museums and institutions to make sure that the work is preserved properly. It becomes

a social responsibility. And I'm hoping that not only African-Americans will but Americans generally will step up to the plate and begin to support the arts that much more thoroughly making sure that it is preserved for future generations because it's not just about a representation of black subjects that are important to a black audience. This is a part of America's cultural heritage that you have to hold on to and preserve. Yeah yeah. Well thank you very much. Thank you for the call Thank you for the call other quote calls are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5. You have talked about I have read a quote was virtually the same thing that you said yesterday in your talk about struggling to figure out who you were as an artist and what you were doing in this. This was the quote about how you or your crew cried you cried all day cried or were grabbing the way home you cried when you're working with your students. You're cried when you got into bed at night and have you stopped crying. So so you got to the point where you've you sort of felt comfortable but

you felt like you knew what it was you were you were trying to do. Well you know it's really true I was so. You know this this thing that we do this thing called Art is is it takes extraordinary takes an extraordinary toll on the body and on the mind it's a difficult way to live a life. And it's a very very very demanding. It is it's a demanding mistress and exacting and there was a period when I just simply you know that there are any number of influences that people that I admired in the last collar people that I want to emulate people that I wanted to be like but I wasn't them I was me. And so what is unique What is unique about about oneself and how do you express that. But for me it was an interesting part turning point because after doing all of this sort of you know this sort of soul searching and moving around the country and being upset and crying

and trying to negotiate that who wouldn't what of myself. It was really an understanding that I was in deep search. Of a of a very particular voice of my own specific voice my own specific voicing who was this woman carry me wings. What did she feel. What did she know. What did she think. What could she make of those things. And the moment that I realized that I sounded like my mother which was startling was also the moment that I stopped crying. That it was simply this kind of coming together of emotional energies that I that was profoundly illuminating and and I could then move on knowing I think maybe maybe in some way that that that this voicing came from some place of this voicing

had a history and that I simply needed to pay attention to that history to its past to its present to its future. Locating it. And so yeah I don't know if that's true and I did but it seemed to make a great difference in my life understanding that there was my mother's voice and her blood running through me. They had me since a need a certain kind of work possible. I did the kitchen table series right in the middle of that realisation. Well there is in some of those photographs there's a mother and a daughter. There's a triptych that these think it's least three panels maybe there's a more of the mother in that are at the table. And it seems that that's. That's a lot with those images and so what you could what imagine that. Among the things you were thinking about was you were being that little girl and that woman being your mother.

You know I saw this this child I worked with several children over the over the years and I always find them in the strangest way. And so one afternoon again I was in the process of working on a kitchen table and photographing and you know stumbling through in trying to get everything right in trying to determine the precise mood at the location of things and people and objects within the scene. And I knew that I wanted to work with the child I wanted to work with some earlier version of myself some permutation of Carrie Lee Eames as a as a five year old or a 10 year old. And so finally one afternoon I'm driving down the street and I see this young girl sort of terrorizing a boy on her bicycle she was like beating him with the stick or something. And I thought there she. Is she looked exactly like me when I was like that it she was. And perfect. She was absolutely perfect this girl comes into my home and of course I go over I meet her mother and her other sisters I invite them over to my house explain to the mother what I'm trying to do what I expect what I'm going to pay all those issues have to be decided.

And and we immediately began work and this child was a natural. I just had to say OK so you're going to stand over here in that shot and then you're going to stand over here in that shot and then you're going to sit over here in that shot. And she was perfect. It was really kind of an amazing experience. And you didn't really you didn't tell her this is what I want you to be thinking about this is what this is what the story is. You just it's just just a bit just to be here just to be able to just a bit just a bit. We just we just kind of had the sort of wonderful directorial relationship she sort of understood a case of I'm standing here and I'm looking at you that way. And how are you going to respond to me. Now this is about her homework now. How do you negotiate a homework when you're it. So we of course there was there was some stuff but not but not a lot. And and I think that we shot that sequence there. There are five images. And all I think we finished probably about two two and a half hours it was just like magic I was wonderful just means and set them up

and knock him off. There must have been so hard because you're in the picture. You would you would. How did you did you did you try to set it up close in the picture take a picture and then. That's right it's deep focus it's deep focus and you know one of the things that I love about being an artist and I do love being an artist as tough as it is is that I have an incredible amount of time to think about what it is that I'm trying to do BUT I'M TRYING TO ME. But the but that the process takes a very deep deep focus and the ability to concentrate very specifically on on a goal. And so working with that child for instance that night volatile it meant that one simply has to be very very focused and so we were able to do it and I'm very happy with the with the results and sort of hey you know let's talk with someone else here in Champaign why number two. Well thank you very much. I've been enjoying your conversation and

learned some things but I am concerned because I think I am getting cynical. I have I know just enough about Photoshop to know how that photograph can be changed and I have started working on it. Photograph I notice very often what I say to myself how is this photograph been changed to get to what a photographer wants to see wants me to see and how I should seek experience. You have any exit gesture in there how that we can separate these two things and be sure that we are getting the true feeling from the photographer. I mean I think probably are you getting the true feeling from the photographer. It may be a truth that you might not be necessarily interested in but it is in fact the truth the mean photographs have for have often been manipulated in

an manipulated in various in various ways. I think that the most important thing is does the photograph represent a truth that seems true to you and does it get it something thats important to you that does it illuminated or reveal something that is true to your experience and if it does that I dont think it really matters if its manipulated or not. I'll have to do some thinking about him. I know it's you well you know there's no there's a way in which we've of course thought about photographs for so long as being this objective truth and suddenly with all the new sort of digital technology that's available to us we are I think finally sort of catching up with the reality that many photographers have known for a long time that photographs can be manipulated and they often are. But I think perhaps again the thing to be much more concerned

about is what the photograph means to you whether it's manipulated or not. Does it get at some truth. Does it reveal something that you find important and or illuminating. I think that that's really the larger question that needs to be asked of contemporary photography at this point. OK thank you very much. And I was thinking about. Thanks for calling. Well it seems that it's but if we're talking about images that are made as art objects and images that are made as journalism maybe they're different. Maybe the issues are different at least in trying to figure out what what what is it that the photographer is trying to tell me and how how much has he or have he or she fiddled with things to produce that image and in some to some cases maybe it doesn't matter if you look at a scene you think well maybe I think would be better if we move that lamp over three and I think you're right about that but there's employees that Angus and of course and I

think that you're absolutely right you're absolutely right and so we're expecting a kind of artistic or rather journalistic truth from from journalists we don't always get it and we don't always get it but we are expecting that we assume that for instance the photographs that are causing an enormous stir right now in this country. You know these photographs of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated by American soldiers we assume that those photographs are telling us something about the truth. They're not. Of course they they're never going to tell us the whole truth but they are certainly telling us something about the truth and so yes I think that journalists do have another kind of obligation and one that I hope that they are paying more attention to. But again there is no way that we can ever really know what has been manipulated and what has not. We can only bank on the truth of the journalist in that case. And that goes back to having a sense of one's own integrity and the ability to to to sleep with oneself at night.

I know that you in your life have been interested in a lot of different things and that you have I know have said that at times you were interest you thought maybe you would be an anthropologist you were interested in that. I know that you're interested in folklore and I actually have spent some time academically pursuing that and those things do come out in the work. Let me ask you maybe you can talk about that about how it is you think those kinds of interests show up in the work. Well I mean it's true. I thought that I was going to be an anthropologist I loved anthropology and ethnology and folklore and biology I mean I was very interested in the world of science the world of you know why things operated as they did how the world came to be in its present form. And so so I have always been interested in the sciences and some sort of way and absolutely I mean I think that you know my my interest in certain sites in

Africa. I had to do with that in West Africa certainly had to do with my my sort of tangential interest that I still maintain and in anthropology though I'm not an anthropologist in that I don't sort of do scientific studies of places in yet my drive to look at places to under stand I'm to understand something about the archaeology of a place and the architecture of a place is absolutely essential to me in the structure in the structure of the photographs. I did a whole series of works along the slave coast of West Africa the archaeology and the architecture of the system of slavery was absolutely necessary for me to understand it was absolutely necessary for me to understand the shape and the construction of these buildings. But in order to but but really in order to make an art work out of them that again that what alumina ate them just that much more for

their you know that that much that a deeper. So so I've spent a long time. You know I'm interested in history those things guide me those things sort of move me through the process of work there the first place that I begin to do a level of investigation and then I put it all aside. I run out into the world and try to make what I think I really need to make responding as viscerally as possible to to the structures that are in front of me. The cultural structures that are in front of me. You know I'm interested in having to talk a little bit about some of the installations that you have done as I think that the idea is is pretty interesting that what you have done is taken taking the images photographs some of them archival some other your own photographs and they have been printed on big panels of fabric hung from the ceiling in a way so that visitors people who go through the installation can actually can walk up to them can

walk around them. And what's interesting is the fact that the material is sheer enough so that you see the picture that's printed on it but you can also see through it and you can do interesting things where you can hang the panels in ways so that you can stand in front of one and see that image but you can also see one that's in back of it and once it's in back it's that it's and you're layering up the images and really interesting it was like you know it's like a collage montage thing in existence. Yeah yeah. How did you come on that idea of doing that. Well you know I have been you know I I had really wanted to get off the wall I didn't want to I mean I've done many many different kinds of installations and I didn't want to be on a wall anymore I didn't want to experience the photograph or a photographic installation linearly. I wanted to be able to move through it somehow I wanted to be able to move through the work of art and I wanted the audience to engage with me in that kind of way that they would be able to move through the work of art what a well idea right that we could

move through the work of art that we in fact could become a participant observer part of the piece in the piece activating the piece so that when you stand in it right someone looking from the outside of it would see you as a part of this work of art. So this is these these ideas were very much going on and so I was living in in Europe I've been trying to figure this out for a number of years trying to figure out how to print on various substrates and surfaces. And finally in Berlin leave it to the Germans to like you know figure it out. They had figured out a really beautiful beautiful process for printing. On KLOV and I found them and I went there and then I wound up spending basically three years going back and forth working on a number of different projects and this kind of way using this shears diaphanous material. Often the photographs coming out of the different in some instances coming out of various archives going back to the caller's question again that the

need to preserve our archives so that artists will have access to them that intellectuals and scholars will have access to these materials so that we can think about them in a new way in the future. So so it was a very important to do that and then of course to make my own photographs in relationship to include those as well as as well in the installation. So it's been a it's been a good good good way of working and of course those installations also involved sound as well and in one case I'm working with the couple composer James Newton who did a really beautiful piece for ritual in revolution and another visual artist you Ulysses Jenkins who assisted me with sound for the Hampton project so they'd been really wonderful ways of breaking out of the box breaking out of the box and. And so then after I did that I thought well you know since they were sort of very filmic and cinematic I thought well maybe now it's time to make some some film and and some sentiment before I

before I rush off to join the circus. We're going to have to stop I'm sorry I know you're kicking me out for I don't want to go. Well we could keep the end of my show. Thank you so much thank you very much for being with us Carrie me whims and people should go out and look. Go to the library go to wherever you are you can find art books look for her work because it has been collected catalogs of some of these shows and there are books that give you an idea of her work because it's really beautiful. Thank you. Thanks so much for inviting me.