FIGURE 1

Carrie Mae Weems (American; b. 1953). Black and Tanned Your Whipped Wind of Change Howled Low Blowing Itself-Ha-Smack Into the Middle of Ellington's Orchestra Billie Heard It Too & Cried Strange Fruit Tears, from the series From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995. Chromogenic color print, overlaid with text sandblasted in glass; image: diam. 45.7 cm (18 3/4 in.); overall: 59.7 x 49.4 cm (23 1/2 x 19 1/2 in.); framed: 68 x 58 cm ( 26 3/4 x 22 7/8 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago, Horace W. Goldsmith Fund (1996.424).
Image courtesy of Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.

Introduction

Roy DeCarava’s 1952 photograph Man Coming Up Subway Stairs (Portfolio, no. 16) features a middle-aged African American with jacket under his arm, ascending a stairway. The diagonal of the handrail and the right angles formed by the steps and lines of the building draw our attention to the subject’s expressive face, as do the light tones of his shirt and the partially lighted window, against the darkness of the wall. He focuses his eyes forward and bites his lip, revealing a wrinkled and scar-riddled cheek. Judging from his misshapen hat and soiled shirt, he appears to be a laborer; whatever his occupation, his demeanor communicates both the persistence and resignation attributable to the daily grind of work. DeCarava’s choice of an obscured and anonymous identity tempers the African American specificity of the image with the generality of urban experience. In this way, the photographer rendered this subject symbolic of anyone who works hard for a living, encouraging viewers to identify with him. The strength of Man Coming Up Subway Stairs lies not just in DeCarava’s formal and technical dexterity, but also in the way he allows us to layer the image with our preconceived notions of work, African American men, and city life. At once a document of African American experience and a symbol of human existence, this photograph, an excellent example of DeCarava’s efforts in a social-documentary mode, has an impact that is simultaneously individual and universal.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, a new generation of African American artists emerged. Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and Willie Robert Middlebrook may be considered the beneficiaries of the equal-rights movements: each had the advantage of coming of age in a society in which under-represented and disenfranchised people had more educational and financial opportunities than were previously available. Yet, even after certain concessions to equality have been made, Simpson, Weems, and Middlebrook exist, as do we all, in a media-driven world in which ethnically- and gender-based prejudices still prevail. At the crux of these artists’ work lies a deep-rooted questioning of how mass media and art participate in the creation and dissemination of stereotypical information. 1 Determined to assert the individuality of African Americans, they produce art that explores issues such as race, personal relationships, cultural repatriation, sexual orientation, the nature of gender, and the importance of family. Their work will be considered here in terms of the similarity of their approaches to art-making, modes of representation, and intentions.