Carrie Mae Weems
“i looked and looked and failed to see what so terrified you.”
(2006, I Looked and Looked and Failed to See What So Terrified You, Carrie Mae Weems)
Weems combines text and image with a synergy that urges attention toward the black female image. And as both author and actor (often the protagonist of her works as she is in I Looked and Looked and Failed to See What So Terrified You) she is bold. She celebrates the black image, reclaims all the moments it has been used for profit, exploitation, and shame, and captures the humanity of the black family…all to say the oppressive systems who’ve governed the messages, have gotten it wrong time and time again.
In Book of Delights, Gay references this image below in part of a reflection on loitering. I’ve looked at this photo and thought about the embodiment of joy in a setting that does not list it on its policy expectations.
But isn’t that wide breadth of a smile and expanded arms the most delightful expectation of the human experience and the minutes in which that expression lifted is inconsequential to the productivity of (at least) an 8-hr day? So, I say have more of them. More disruptions for joy, laughter, exhausted exhales, and deep lung filling resplendence. Look, look, and be inspired.
[Book of Delights pg. 232 | No.87 Loitering]