Selfie Week 1

"Kitchen Table Series"
Learner

"Kitchen Table Series"
Blind Follower from Birth to Death

Susan Sontag excerpt from On Photography
Quote #1
“This very insatiability of the photographing eye changes the terms of confinement in the cave, our world. In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing” (Sontang 2010).
Response #1
I found this quote to be one of my favorites from this excerpt because it explained the differences between what people thought photographic technology would bring, and what it has actually enabled throughout the years. Photography was originally a way for people to capture the most inspiring, special, or personal moments. During that time, people would seek to photograph only the moments they thought memorable. Now however, people tend to seek moments they believe to be picture-worthy. Rather than truly enjoying the moment they are in, I believe people spend their time trying to determine which moments and images are ‘valuable enough’  to record and possibly share with others. In doing so, especially after seeing thousands of images throughout their lifetimes I believe that humans have created boundaries that limit the range of images they allow themselves to take and share. 
Quote #2
“Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads -- as an anthology of images” (Sontang 2010).
Response #2
This quote reminds humans that we have an ability that would seem unimaginable to those who lived before photographs. Humans now can see images—specific moments personal to the person who took them—from around the world, through different lenses, without even leaving their own homes. Photographs, through their ability to provide us with so many different perspectives, have allowed humans to believe that we are aware and knowledgeable, or have the ability to be, about everything around the world.

 

Revisiting Carrie Mae Weems’s Landmark “Kitchen Table Series”

Quote #1
“Weems’s black-and-white photographs are like mirrors, each reflecting a collective experience: how selfhood shifts through passage of time; the sudden distance between people, both passable and impassable; the roles that women accumulate and oscillate between; how life emanates from the small space we occupy in the world” (Palumbo 2020).
Response #1
This quote caught my attention because it brings to attention Carrie Mae Weems’s intention to demonstrate the daily life of most women. I believe that the Kitchen Table Series demonstrates that although women have not always been considered as important or “essential” as men, they truly hold an immense impact on the people around them. Although this series helps to give African Americans representation through art, its true purpose, I believe, is to show that even when controlled by society’s limitations, women play many different roles throughout their lifetimes and throughout their daily lives—selfhood, motherhood, lover—and all of which are essential to society.  
Quote #2
“Weems knew she was achieving something new in her work with “The Kitchen Table Series,” but she couldn’t have anticipated the power her daily performance would have three decades on: a series so universal and timeless, yet crucial in amplifying Black perspectives in art. “I knew that I was making images unlike anything I had seen before, but I didn’t know what that would mean,” she told W” (Palumbo 2020).
Response #2
Carrie Mae Weems, like many women, especially African American women, was unaccustomed to seeing women represented in art. When making the Kitchen Table Series, she portrayed the importance of women’s roles, and the many different roles women play throughout their lifetimes. Weems demonstrates the way women are able to impact, and perhaps even mold, others’ lives and experiences simply by being themselves, mothers, lovers, and more. She, like most other African American women, knew that they were completely excluded from art, and were not portrayed, and when making this series, she made something that included African American women in a way not many cared to do before.