Abstract:

Giving fresh attention to Carrie Mae Weems's photography, this photo essay focuses on the artist's critical engagement with architecture through a series of black and white images in the Louisiana Project. We argue that by contrasting the built environment of Greek Revival houses with industrial and impoverished neighborhood spaces in and around New Orleans, Weems leverages a subtle and searing critique of entrenched systems of racism and racial oppression. The photographs, centered on a mysterious witness figure dressed in period clothing and portrayed by Weems herself, point out long-lasting effects of racial hierarchy expressed in architectural and preservationist practices. Weems's critical subjectivity evokes the colonized body trapped in a mythos that created and still, in the twenty-first century, sustains systemic racism in economic and social modalities, particularly in the southeastern United States. Our article interprets Weems's photography, here, as an indictment of and a protest against continuing patterns of racism.

摘要：

这篇摄影文章重新关注 Carrie Mae Weems 的摄影作品，通过路易斯安那项目中的一系列黑白图像关注艺术家对建筑的批判性参与. 我们认为，通过将希腊复兴式房屋的建成环境与新奥尔良及其周边地区的工业和贫困社区空间进行对比，威姆斯利用了对根深蒂固的种族主义和种族压迫制度的微妙而激烈的批评。这些照片以身着古装、由威姆斯本人描绘的神秘证人形象为中心，指出了种族等级制度在建筑和保护主义实践中所表现出的长期影响。威姆斯的批判主观性唤起了被困在一个神话中的殖民身体，这个神话在 21 世纪创造并仍然在经济和社会模式中维持系统性种族主义，特别是在美国东南部。我们的文章在这里将 Weems 的摄影作品解释为对持续存在的种族主义模式的控诉和抗议。