Photograph by Ed Pollard, Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II digital slr-2008.

Untitled

Artist Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)

CultureAmerican

Date2003

MediumPigmented inkjet print

DimensionsOverall, Image: 10 × 10 in. (25.4 × 25.4 cm)
Overall: 12 × 14 in. (30.5 × 35.6 cm)
Overall, Mat: 22 × 18 1/8 in. (55.9 × 46 cm)

PortfolioEatonville series

Credit LineGift of Joyce F. and Robert B. Menschel

Object number2007.12.113.3

Collections

Photography

Not on view

Label Texttop Carrie Mae Weems American, b. 1953 Untitled, 2003 Pigmented inkjet print (photograph), from the Eatonville series Gift of Joyce F. and Robert B. Menschel 2007.12.113.3 bottom Thomas Barrow American, b. 1938 Barcelona Backdrop, 1975 Gelatin silver print (photograph), from the Cancellations series Gift of James and Holly Bogin 2005.27.10 These two photographs dramatize the relationship between artists and the natural world. Above, Carrie Mae Weems pairs text and image to evoke the life and spirit of writer Zora Neal Hurston (1891–1960). The photograph comes from a series on Eatonville, Florida, Hurston’s home and the first U.S. town incorporated by black residents. In the image, Weems reenacts the writer’s daily life, suggesting how a place like Eatonville exists in memory and imagination as much as in the land itself. Below, Thomas Barrow’s deadpan image of a desolate parking lot captures the human manipulation of the natural world. Yet by carving a large X into his negative (which ensures it will appear in every print), he asserts the artist’s role in making the image, demonstrating that any depiction of the landscape is a manipulated scene. ProvenanceCollection of Robert B. and Joyce F. Menschel, New York; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, Gift of Joyce F. and Robert B. Menschel, 2007 Exhibition History"The Nexus," Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA, January 25 - April 28, 2013. "Looking Both Ways,” Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Newport News, VA, January 17 – March 22, 2015. "New Light on Land: Photographs from the Chrysler Collection," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, January 28 - May 15, 2016.