Carrie Mae Weems
[Artist, b. 1953, Portland, Oregon, lives in Syracuse, New York.]

 I got my first camera when I was 21—my boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday. But at that point politics was my life, and I viewed the camera as a tool for expressing my political beliefs rather than as an art medium. 
 Grabbing snatching blink and you be gone. 
 Photography can still be used to champion activism and change. I believe this, even while standing in the cool winds of postmodernism... Postmodernism looked radical, but it wasn’t. As a movement it was profoundly liberal and became a victim of itself. Precisely at this historical moment, when multicultural democracy is the order of the day, photography can be used as a powerful weapon toward instituting political and cultural change. I for one will continue to work toward this end. 
 I’m not interested in stomping around the world with thirteen cameras, ten lenses, umbrellas and stands, and all that bullshit. I move around with an old beat-up camera, a fucked-up tripod, and as much film as I can carry. Then I just trust that I know what I’m doing with this little black box... 
 It’s fair to say that black folks operate under a cloud of invisibility—this too is part of the work, is indeed central to [my photographs]... This invisibility—this erasure out of the complex history of our life and time—is the greatest source of my longing. 
 A black idiom is simply one that comes out of the peculiar social, economic and cultural conditions that mold black people. If a photographer is sensitive and understands the idiosyncratic gestures and rituals of the culture and employs this understanding while shooting, then that person is working out of a black idiom or a black esthetic. 
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