Carrie Mae Weems is an American artist and photographer known for creating installations that combine photography, audio, and text to examine many facets of contemporary American life.

Weems, who is probably best known as a photographer, initially studied modern dance. She received her first camera at age 21. In 1978 she began her first photographic project, called Environmental Profits, which focused on life in Portland. That same year she started her first major series, Family Pictures and Stories, completed about five years later. In 1981 she graduated with a B.A. from the California Institute of the Arts, and she later obtained an M.F.A. (1984) from the University of California, San Diego, and an M.A. (1987) from the University of California, Berkeley.

Weems was influenced by the work of earlier African American photographers who documented the black experience, notably Roy DeCarava. She began to refer to herself as the “image maker.” Weems’s early images explored personal and familial themes, as reflected in the title she used for several works, The Kitchen Table Series (1990). These images often were accompanied by text and audio recordings. As her work developed, she became more explicitly political, continuing to explore themes of racism and the African American experience while addressing gender issues and the nature of male-female relationships. Weems taught photography at several colleges and exhibited her works frequently. In the late 1990s and the 2000s she also embraced video technology, though the still image remained central in her work.

In 2013 Weems was named a MacArthur Foundation fellow.