I would like to dedicate this post to my best friend who has been battling cancer for nearly three years now. Cancer the roller coaster, from the first diagnosis, to the chemo, to the hospitalisation. My friend was unable to walk for a time, given the pain, the endless trips back & forth from hospital, and staying in hospital. The wide variety of nurses, losing control of one's own body, being suddenly reliant on others when one has always been fiercely self reliant and independent; a total shock psychologically, with illness comes the realisation that you are more dependant on others that you might have wanted, and that without the help of others you wouldn't be able to stand up or go to the toilet, you are ever so grateful to the nice nurse who doesn't kill your veins. The nurse is experienced and doesn't cause any unnecessary extra pain by missing your veins or getting the needle stuck. Then after the chemo, not knowing whether you are going to survive or not, living in the moment. Then Christmas and New Year, the actual realisation that you are still alive, even after taking the highest lots of chemotherapy that a human body can withstand. The joy of all your friends and family that you are still alive and that you are able to actually walk on Christmas day and eat solid foods without throwing up or ending up hospitalised, a major achievement. The joy all around that even if you looked completely different from three years ago due to being ravaged by cancer that you are still with us, enjoying having a laugh. You can't read books anymore as it makes you so tired, but you are always happy to watch a bit of comedy with your friends and finally you have been able to eat and celebrate Christmas lunch for the first time in three years. What will happen in 2018? You don't know and you don't care, you just manage a day at a time, you live in the moment.
I have found that after dealing for three years with my friend's cancer I have very little patience for those who whine and complain, for arrogant people, the self centred or people that bring you down. Most importantly I don't waste time with pretentious, un-engaging art.
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| Photo of Carrie Mae Weems courtesy of ARTnews |
So I was pleased with the exhibition that I saw at Tate Modern by Carrie Mae Weems, curated by Mark Godfrey, titled 'From Here I Saw What Happened & I Cried', 1995-1996.
It fully engaged me straight away. It's an installation of photographs. The photographs were selected by the artist from Museum and University archives as early as the 1850's. They are photographs of African American slaves taken in the Southern Sates of America. In the exhibition they are grouped, breaking down in subsets to show that African Americans were considered a lower species. You can see this by the way the photographs were taken, that the slaves were considered less than human.
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| Photos by Carrie Mae Weems courtesy of Pinterest |
The original photographs clearly attempt to bolster the justification of slavery. These pictures had been commissioned as a form of propaganda for slavery when it had already been abolished in other states. By using photographs from archives and putting captions on them such as 'You became playmate to the Patriarch' about their lives the artist is humanising them and confronting you with their actual situations. The photographs are coloured in red. One generally associated red with blood, meaning that their lives were cheap. When taking pictures of women slaves naked without their consent, it's about the mistreatment and exploitation of African Americans.
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| Photo by Carrie Mae Weems courtesy of Pinterest |
The photographs are shown in groups with frames around them. The fact that it was acceptable that the original photographs of the slaves were displayed as exhibits in public, something that would not have been done with white people, points at the cruelty of the practice of slavery. This again shows that they were seen as less then human. Slaves were bought and sold in slaves markets, displayed naked in the same way as animals; it makes you feel sadness, anger, but there is also satisfaction that these images are able to be used to commemorate them in a positive way, the antithesis of their original purpose to show them as other people's property.
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| Photos by Carrie Mae Weems courtesy of Pinterest |
To me these photographs show their strength and dignity in the face of their situation as slaves. The artist has personalised the photographs by referring to their names and what roles they had. It's her response to her distress at seeing the original photographs. Where the photographs were originally used as a vehicle for furthering racism, negatively stereotyping, she is using photography for the opposite.
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| Photo by Carrie Mae West courtesy of Pinterest |
The original photographs were daguerreotypes, they were the earliest form of photography, capturing images onto to a silver plate see pics below. This process was invented by L J M Daguerre in France, while in England an alternative process was invented, called the collodian process, which consisted of coating a glass plate; this was invented by Frederick Scott Archer. In the mean time Henry Fox Talbot was coating a sheet of paper with silver which was then exposed to light. There is a Museum in England dedicated to Henry Fox Talbot.
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| Example of Daguerrotype photos courtesy of Pinterest |
Carrie Mae Weems has rephotographed the images and enlarged them, one of the reasons is that maybe the original daguerreotype photographs would have been quite small see pic. above, but by printing them large and grouping them the photographs take more of a human scale. In the way that they are displayed on the walls of a whole room they are given dominance & importance. This is an excellent exhibition.
The new director of the Tate is showing that she is giving more prominence to gender, sexual orientation, race and etnicity, a greater variety of artists which is shown in the new display on Level 2.
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