The work of Carrie Mae Williams uses photographs from the past to remind us of the struggles of African Americans. Through these artworks, she displays African Americans who were treated as sub-human and brings out their pain. Additionally, she gives them a voice by displaying their feelings and emotions, such as the desire for compassion and agency.
She expresses meaning through multiple techniques of her website. Ultimately, Weems forces the viewer to reflect on the past and hopes that we learn from the injustice that minorities, especially African Americans, have suffered through.

In many of her photo works, Williams positions her photos side-by-side to convey a story between multiple pictures. For example, in the “Black Love” gallery, she places three images in a row. The first shows a woman in a dark house standing in front of an open door. The second shows a man at the door. The third shows them both in the house and embracing intimately. The sequential order of these pictures clearly show when the events start and end, bringing us from cold, dark loneliness to a warm, brighter love.

The photos may encourage other African Americans to relish in love and intimacy. According to Professor Cooks, white owners would repress sexuality in male and female slaves (Lec, Jan 6). Women were raped while men were beat for expressing sexuality and stereotyped as sexual predators. Even after slavery was prohibited, it was taboo for a black man or woman to express love. However, the photos reject that notion. The title “Black Love” asserts that black people are humans who yearn for love. The woman’s body language changes from the first to the second. She starts off with a slumped shoulders, signalling tension, smoking from her right hand. In the next photo, when the man enters our view, she becomes more casual, now with her right palm on the door, inviting the man to come in. The shift in her body language clearly conveys her desire for love, refuting the old notion that slave owners could control another person’s desires.

Another prominent feature is the darkness which hides the details of most of the photo, including the man and woman in the last photo which only shows their silhouettes. Weems hides their features to suggest that their love life is private and that they deserve to have privacy. Again, this refutes the tradition of slave owners deciding which slaves can have children. The couple gets to enjoy each other’s presence without someone else controlling their lives. Ultimately, Weems suggests that black people deserve to enjoy romance and sexuality and deserve to have the agency to choose who they are with.

It’s easy to change the size of images on a website, and Weems uses this feature to instill power. The pictures in the gallery “Four Women” are unnaturally large. Combined, the images form a window that go beyond the limits of the screen display. The photos were taken in 1988, a few decades after the Civil Rights Movement, so the women have likely faced discrimination and fought for equal rights. By making their photographs bigger, Weems makes the women appear powerful and gives them agency to demand equality. Additionally, the poses of the four women give them some power. The first one raises her fist in the air, a sign of resolute strength. The second stands calm with her hands together, almost like a goddess. The third leans back with her shoulders slumped in a sassy demeanor. The fourth smiles and leans toward us, showing off her beautiful outfit. The large size of their photos contribute to their powerful poses. Weems lets them reclaim their agency by focusing our gaze onto the women, almost as if they’re demanding our attention.

The women may serve as role models to other women who might be afraid to speak up. Despite the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, institutions were still discriminating against women in subtle ways, like unequal pay and forbidding certain jobs. By showing women who are assertive, Weems assures other women who face these injustices that they have the power to change their society, and thus she inspires women to fight against sexist views and structural discrimination.

Titus Kaphar also hearkens to systemic racial issues of the past. His main medium of art is oil painting, and in many paintings he distorts those in power and brings out the voices of those who were oppressed, mainly slaves. Kaphar has said that he can’t erase or change history, but he can manipulate it temporarily to force us to recognize the inequalities people face and encourage us to make the world more equal.

Similar to Weems’ work “Ritual and Revolution,” Titus Kaphar also plays around with illusions from different perspectives. His sculpture “Forgotten Soldier,” shows two different images with light and without. With light, the sculpture shows the head of an elite white man. In the darkness, the sculpture shows the outline of a black Union soldier. By using a sliding window view, Kaphar allows us to see these two different perspectives clearly. Additionally, the hidden outline conveys how even white Union men overshadow the black men who helped win the war. In history, white men were the ones praised for ending slavery, yet the black people who escaped slavery and fought for their rights did not receive as much attention. For example, everyone knows Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but not as many people give praise to the slave revolutions, such as the Haitian Revolution, or Harpers Ferry. The website also tells us this took place in Yorktown, which is where the American Revolution ended. Thus, the sculpture appears to be celebrating American power and independence, but in actuality, America relied on the work of slaves.

Kaphar, through this trick with light, highlights how black people don’t receive enough praise for ending slavery and for fighting against discrimination. Instead of relistening to the same whitewashed history, Kaphar suggests that we look deeper into history and learn about the black lives who advocated against racial oppression to give them their due respect in sacrificing their livelihoods for the future generations of African Americans.

“Enough About You” is a prime example of Kaphar’s attempts to distort history. The crumpled portion of the painting is actually a reproduction of an earlier painting, “Elihu Yale with Members of his Family and an Enslaved Child,” shown on the right Professor Cooks mentions how these men were part of the East India Company (Lec, 1/15), which participated in an early form of capitalism that exploited indentured servants and slaves for profit. The men are clearly higher in status, being the main subject at a significant height level. In contrast, the black boy is of a lower status as he’s smaller in comparison, wearing less stylish clothes and a collar to signify his servitude to the family.

Kaphar manipulates the image by crumpling the men, then repaints the black boy on a canvas with vibrant colors and shifts the boy’s gaze from the men to the viewer. This shift symbolizes a change in demeanor. The boy no longer serves the men and instead attains self-confidence. Additionally, he adds a frame around the boy, which is an “antique frame” according to the description below the canvas. “Antique” typically implies great importance, and in this case Kaphar raises the boy to a higher status, making him the important figure instead of the men.

Ultimately, the influence of the white men is still present. Their faces are still visible even with the canvas crumpled. Yet, Kaphar urges us to stop revering men like Elihu Yale and respect those like the boy who worked tirelessly without being given respect or honor. By doing this, Kaphar helps treat the injustice they faced. Even though those people are long dead, we can at least honor their deaths in the present.