Photo Series: The Bedroom Series

 

"Gossip and Wine"

"Hair and Movies"

"Music and Books"

"Bonnets and Homework"

I recreated my series based on Carrie Mae Weems’ “The Kitchen Table Series”. I did my own twist and recreated it in my bedroom instead of my kitchen. My bedroom is my sanctuary. I do everything in my bedroom, so I wanted to show that through my series. Every type of self-care that I do is in my bedroom. From talking to my friends on the phone and drinking wine, to being comfortable and doing my homework on my bed, to listening to my favorite songs and reading my favorite books, and to watching movies on my laptop and doing things to make myself feel and look good like my hair. All these things in these photos represent who I am and what I do to myself happy. In Carrie Mae Weems’ series, you can see everything she does and is going through as a woman through her series. And to relate it to my series, you do not have to be a woman to do things that make you happy or to show what you go through in your own home, and Carrie shows that as well. In “Revisiting Carrie Mae Weems’s Landmark “Kitchen Table Series”” by Jacqui Palumbo, he states, “Everyone can relate to this work,” Sann said. “It’s not just Black women; it’s white women, Asian women. Men can see the women in their lives—memories from their childhood or scenes from their marriage or their family life. It’s so universal and yet representation like this is so rare.” This quote to me just goes to show how Carrie Mae Weems was making photography that represented Black women, which was rare, but everybody in the world regardless of race or gender. And with that, I feel like my series represents that too. In “Revisiting Carrie Mae Weems’s Landmark “Kitchen Table Series”” by Jacqui Palumbo, he states, “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.” This quote shows that whenever someone looks at her series, people will be able to relate to her work that she is showing. It should make people feel like they are looking at themselves in a mirror once they look at her photographs. Her work demonstrates her life, but also women in general and all the roles they have. That small space she uses- her kitchen- she shows how it is not just a place where food must be involved. It is a small space that people can experience every emotion and life event with themselves or others. In my series, my small space is my bedroom and I feel like it is the same thing- you can go through every emotion and life experience in your bedroom. It is not only just for sleeping.  In “How Carrie Mae Weems Rewrote the Rules of Image-Making” by Megan O’Grady, she states, “Weems stares out at us in a way that insists we not simply look at her but really see her — a charged exchange, but also a beautifully leveling one: Here we are, human to human, across the table from one another. She plays a character: friend, parent, breadwinner, lover, a woman who resists classification, a woman of the world, of political conscience.” This quote means to me that through Carrie’s photo series, you not only see a woman in her kitchen, but you see the many roles that a woman must change into based on who is with her. This is the reality of a woman and the changes she must go through every day that others might not be able to see. It shows that she is human just like anyone else. To relate it back to my series, you see just how human I can be by not only showing the “pretty” side of who I am on social media, but behind the scenes of what my life consists of.