“With From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, Carrie Mae Weems reveals how photography has played a key role throughout history in shaping and supporting racism, stereotyping, and social injustice.
Weems re-photographed and enlarged these images and printed them through colored filters: two blue-toned images bookend a grouping of images printed in red. She framed the red-toned prints in circular mattes, meant to suggest the lens of a camera, and placed all of the prints beneath glass sandblasted with text. About her choice of text the artist has said: “I’m trying to heighten a kind of critical awareness around the way in which these photographs were intended.” She hopes this strategy “gives the subject another level of humanity and another level of dignity that was originally missing in the photograph” - MoMA