The below photo essay, a visual response to Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” is excerpted from Ways of Hearing: Reflections on Music in 26 Pieces, edited by Scott Burnham, Marna Seltzer, and Dorothea von Moltke, and published by Princeton University Press. The editors write in the introduction that Weems’s essay “exhorts us to ‘hear’ in her images the lament that is also both a promise and a plea contained in the soul lyric by Sam Cooke: ‘It’s been so long, it’s been so long, a little too long / A change has gotta come.'”
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Excerpt copyright © 2021 by Princeton University Concerts, reprinted with permission of Princeton University Press.
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I’m perplexed by the credits in this photo essay. Although many are archival shots, some even by known photographers, all are credited in this post as “(© Carrie Mae Weems, courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York).” I spoke with someone at the Gallery, who couldn’t explain why these don’t have actual photo credits, deferring to Ms. Weems and Hyperallergic for doing so. I’m sure that Ms. Weems does not mean to obscure the image makers who preceded her and provided the raw material for this photo essay – can you please tell me why this information is missing?
These are the captions provided by the publisher and as you know the artist has long incorporated appropriated and other images into her art. Thanks for reading.