May Flowers

2002, printed 2013

Carrie Mae Weems

Artist, American, born 1953

Three young Black girls lie on the grass in this closely cropped, sepia-toned, circular photograph so their faces roughly line up near the center. At the bottom of the composition, one girl lies on her back and looks up into the sky. Her head, torso, and right arm are visible. She wears a floral-patterned dress and holds her right hand up to the top of her head. The second girl reclines on her right side behind the first, so she is angled to our left. She props her head in her right hand and looks steadily at us. Her face hovers at the center of the composition. She wears a white t-shirt and a garland encircles her head. The third girl, at the top of the composition, seems to prop her body up on her left elbow. She wears a floral dress and looks down and to our right. Grass and paving rocks fill the space behind her.

Media Options

This object’s media is not available for download. Contact us about image usage.

Photographs by Carrie Mae Weems make us look and think twice. At first glance, this seems to be a 19th-century sepia-toned print of three girls in an idyllic pastoral setting. They are tightly arranged within a circular frame, reminiscent of celestial angels in religious paintings from the Renaissance. When we look closer, we notice the expressions of these girls in floral dresses are focused and deliberate. The figure at center sizes us up, as if to dare us to include them in traditional art historical representations.

Not on view See artworks now on view

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    chromogenic print

  • Credit Line

    Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

  • Dimensions

    image: 78.74 × 78.74 cm (31 × 31 in.)
    framed: 85.09 × 85.09 cm (33 1/2 × 33 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    2014.3.1

  • Copyright

    ©Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

More About this Artwork

Verdant green fields roll in undulating waves back alongside a road in this horizontal landscape painting. The fields take up the left and center of the composition and are painted with thick, curling strokes of emerald, pea, and celery green, and corn yellow to suggest grasses and plants. The pale green road runs up along the right edge of the painting, and is layered with strokes and daubs in butter yellow, spring green, and faint blue. The fields and road meet the horizon line about halfway up the canvas, where an aquamarine-blue sky swirling with white and periwinkle-blue clouds fills the top half of the painting.

Article:  See How Spring Has Inspired Artists Across Time

Explore 25 artworks of the season’s blooms, fashion, and beauty from our collection.

Video:  Women Behind the Camera: Carrie Mae Weems

On September 12, 2015, Carrie Mae Weems discussed her artistic process, including her attempts to make “the invisible visible” by focusing on individuals and groups of people often left out of the historical record.

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Carrie Mae Weems; NGA purchase (through Jack Shainman Gallery, New York), 2014.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2015

  • The Memory of Time: Contemporary Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Acquired with the Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2015, no. 3.

Wikidata ID

Q64145701

You may be interested in

Loading Results