Weems’s essay is excerpted from Ways of Hearing: Reflections on Music in 26 Pieces.

Carrie Mae Weems
Carrie Mae Weems, by shaping an extraordinary artistic language that blends photography, text, and audio and video work, has created some of the most definitive and deliberate portraits of our contemporary social identity. As a preeminent American artist, she was the first African American woman to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, and she has participated in exhibitions at major museums around the world.