When I first viewed Roaming, a photographic series by Carrie Mae Weems, I was struck by thoughts of death. Cloaked in black, a haunted figure — the main subject of all of the photos, sans the last one — moves through spaces throughout Rome, back facing the audience. Initially, I took this body as a symbol of anonymity, a crumb of the iconography of Death, who usually appears faceless and ominous when personified. Death plaguing an apocalpytic Rome, absent of people, of color and life.
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Photo 1. Roaming, 2006.
But the lack of context given beyond the collection's name and birth year on Weems's website made me pause. Rethink.
a slice of Roaming, 2006, as depicted on Carrie Mae Weems's website.
Photo 2. Roaming, 2006.
There are no dimensions of the pictures, descriptions of the materials used, nor names provided for who exists as the subject of these photos. It was only with a little digging that I realized that the person clothed in black is Weems herself, "using [her] body as a way of leading the viewer into those spaces highly aware and challenging those spaces. Challenging and marking them for what they are" ("Carrie Mae Weems: 'Roaming'"). Indeed, Professor Cooks writes in her essay "What's Wrong with Museums?" that Weems "frequently uses herself as the model and voice present in her art [which] offers viewers a feeling of intimacy...as if they are in direct communication with the artist who has witnessed something firsthand" (Cooks, 163).
But why the near-complete lack of information? Why is the only caption amongst these twelve photos a simple " Installation view, Center of Contemporary Art, Seville, Spain, 2010 ?" It is as though words mean nothing and realization comes from inheriting a sort of visceral, emotional experience. As though Weems wants her viewers to focus all of their attention on the photographs, work towards understanding in solitude; work for understanding with the quiet guidance of Weems — or maybe, with Weems as their challenger. As Professor Cooks wrote, there is a feeling of intimate exchange that comes alongside viewing this collection. Perhaps this intimacy becomes tenfold when one, exempt of any linguistic information on Weems's site, returns with the fresh knowledge that the subject is Weems herself. In a sense, it invites the refocusing of one's vision, the shifting of one's gaze, cultivating an incredibly active interaction with Weems's work.
It is captivating, then, that despite the intense focus Weems directs towards her photos, her website does not allow for closer inspection. Unlike many gallery and artist websites, you cannot zoom into any of the photos, cannot parse their individual detail. And the images aren't presented in a slideshow format — click and the last photo is gone — but side-by-side, as if to say please do not look at me as though a body but as a whole. Weems’s choice to use “Bodies of Work” when referring to her collections on her website lends itself to the idea that these collections are in fact bodies, and each photo a part.
WEEMS'S WORK ON GETTY.EDU. WHERE ARE THEIR BODIES?
As I looked through not only Roaming, but her other works (which adhere to the same format on her website), I noticed that Weems is astonishingly explicit in her desire to keep her photos together. That separating them appears to be akin to cutting off a limb, would render them dysfunctional parts that flail when severed from their original self. I viewed her site before perusing through some galleries in which her work was displayed, and I felt a sense of loss looking at the solitary images that were included, scattered across the web as though they had shriveled up and lost their purpose. It felt sacrilegious.
Photo 3. Roaming, 2006.
Photo 4. Roaming, 2006.
Viewing these other websites put all the more emphasis on Weems’s way of displaying her work on her's. Though arguably mechanically reproduced, she finds ways to maintain and even enhance the experience one would have should they view her work in person in an online space through her presentation and meticulous withholding of information.
Extended . . . . . .
While looking for more information about Roaming, I came across this interview she did with Art21.
INTERVIEW WITH ART21.
In it, she speaks of architecture and power. Of Roaming, she says, “...what one is made to feel is the power of the state in relationship to the lower subject. You are always aware that you are sort of a minion in relationship to this enormous edifice—the edifice of power” ("Carrie Mae Weems: 'Roaming'").
Photo 6. Roaming, 2006.
" What is this relationship of power to you? And what is your relationship to power, and how do you contest it? And how do you try to make…someone aware of it? " CMW, Art21
Weems’s thoughts on Roaming allow the viewer to further understand some details about her website. Through watching this interview, I realized how I was subconsciously influenced by her layout while building my knoweldge of her artwork and her as an artist. For one, she seems to cherish the idea of deconstruction. Or, rather, of challenging power. To bring back a quote I pulled earlier from Weems, within Roaming itself, she speaks of "challenging and marking [the pictured monuments] for what they are" by "using her body as a way of leading the viewer into those spaces highly aware and challenging those spaces" ("Carrie Mae Weems: 'Roaming'"). She says that while people may be aware of architecture embodying a sort of "edifice of power," most people "just sort of accept, they submit to them, and I’m of course more interested in challenging them, even when I think they’re sort of sublime in a way" ("Carrie Mae Weems: 'Roaming'").
Photo 7. Roaming, 2006.
Photo 8. Roaming, 2006.
Though I was introduced to this interpretation through Weems's own words, I could've perhaps come to this conclusion on my own by doing a closer analysis of her website. (In fact, just before, I mentioned the concept of being "challenged" by Weems, which she emphasizes in the Art21 interview.) Click any body of work, and you are confronted with the same format: a series of photos from left to right, through which you must scroll horizontally. Usually, you must go up and down – almost as though scaling a hierarchy. Choosing to have the images move to the right almost feels like a deconstruction of that subtly power-based navigation, while simultaneously implying a sense of time. It’s like you are following the natural progression of reading; like you are looking through a timeline. Like Weems is challenging power through a choice as simple as pictoral progression.
“ In one way or another, my work endlessly explodes the limits of tradition. ” CMW, moma.org
Photo 9. Roaming, 2006.
Weems, who says that “Architecture…is very much about power,” seeks to challenge structure and beauty in other ways throughout her website. I noticed, for one, that when she has lists, she does not cut, trim, or rearrange if one runs on too long. She simply lets it run its course. Though this is a small detail, it seems to suggest that she does not see such disregard for symmetry or aesthetic order as a hit to one’s ability to derive meaning from something. Thus: beauty does not hide.
SCREENSHOT OF WEEMS'S WEBSITE, UNDER THE TAB "RETROSPECTIVE."
Photo 10. Roaming, 2006.
" That [this architecture is] of course monumental and beautiful…but I’m not confused about what they’re supposed to mean and what they’re supposed to do. " CMW, guggenheim.org
Photo 11. Roaming, 2006.
Photo 12. Roaming, 2006.
" I don’t make work for the market. I create out of necessity, and so in one strange way, if we were to look at how my work might be received at Sotheby’s or at Christies when it goes up to auction, there’s frankly very little interest in my work. It has been historically undervalued. I think that most people are interested in beautiful things that don’t necessarily cause them to think very deeply about any one thing. And since my work hasn’t really fit within those parameters, it’s not received well within the marketplace. That market is what it is: they’re looking for whatever they’re looking for and I don’t quite fit into the model. But I’ve grown to accept that. " CMW, canadianart.ca
For example: in sections like “Retrospective,” the long list of “Press” does not morph to fit into a neater box, but rather continues past the right side. Like there is no worry wasted on making it appear more symmetrical. No worry wasted on anything that is not the art. And the color scheme is also very simple: red, black, and white. And the red rarely appears unless you are hovering over something. So when none of that is active nor is the red. It is just black-and-white. Kind of gentle. Kind of bleak. All of this, this sort of lukewarm formatting, the horizontal scrolling, the lack of information of materials and dimensions and backstory, is like a protest against order that simultaneously provides a space to challenge the viewers to discover and experience power for themselves.
Installation view, Center of Contemporary Art, Seville, Spain, 2010. Roaming, 2006, in person. A sloppy photo, if anything. Not a care for the glare nor the angle. As if to say, who cares? As long as you've seen the photos. As long as you've met me, here, in this space, no not this space, not the exhibit, here, the photos, the parts, the body, and understood power, and understood the illusion of beauty, and understood your complicity.
Sources
Sources
“Carrie Mae Weems (the J. Paul Getty Museum Collection).” Getty, www.getty.edu/art/collection/person/104PNM. Accessed 19 Jan. 2024.
Carrie Mae Weems | Moma, www.moma.org/artists/7177. Accessed 20 Jan. 2024.
“Carrie Mae Weems: ‘Roaming’ | Art21 ‘Extended Play.’” YouTube, YouTube, 10 Sept. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI0R2qlRfps. Accessed 19 Jan. 2024.
“Challenging the Edifice-Carrie Mae Weems Discusses Her Series Roaming.” The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation, www.guggenheim.org/articles/checklist/challenging-edifice-carrie-mae-weems-discusses-series-roaming. Accessed 19 Jan. 2024.
Cooks, Bridget. “What’s Wrong with Museums? African American Artists Review Art History.” Humanities Core Handbook 2023-2024.
Designed and developed by Lisa Goodlin Design. “Carrie Mae Weems.” Carrie Mae Weems : Roaming, 2006, carriemaeweems.net/galleries/roaming.html#header. Accessed 19 Jan. 2024.
Lee, Yaniya, et al. “The Freedom of Existing on the Edge.” Canadian Art, 16 May 2019, canadianart.ca/interviews/the-freedom-of-existing-on-the-edge/.
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