25 Quotes by Carrie Mae Weems

Sometimes you sacrifice too much. You find yourself out on a limb and not knowing really quite how to get back down the tree. But it’s the space that you’re in because you have taken the risk. I’m not unaware of the sacrifices and, at times, whom your compassion hurts. It’s not all moving in one direction. It’s complicated, as the work is complicated.

My father was very interested in music, and when he and his brothers were young, they had a singing group that used to open for Sam Cooke. There was always music in our house, but there wasn't much art around.

I come from a family of Mississippi sharecroppers just a few generations away from slavery, and I experienced a lot of racism growing up - you can't avoid that if you're a person of color in this country.

I emerged in that incredible moment in the 1980s when all kinds of social questions about subjectivity and objectivity, about who was making, who was looking.

I think that still, for the most part, even in 2010, the vast majority of museum shows and gallery shows and gallerists are pretty much dominated by men. So having a sense of what women are up to, for me, frankly, is very, very important.

I didnt know photography would take me to the places that it has taken me

I don't like directing a lot of people. So trying to keep things really simple and elegant is my preferred way of working.

Suddenly this camera, this thing, allowed me to move around the world in a certain kind of way, with a certain kind of purpose. (On receiving a camera for her twenty-first birthday)

I really like the structure of my body. It moves well, it looks good, it photographs well, it understands gesture and nuance.