Collection Spotlight: Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems often draws upon archival images in her photographic practice, examining how power is constructed through photography. In Blues and Pinks 3, the artist brings together iconic photographs by Charles Moore, who documented the Civil Rights movement.

Here, through cropping, tinting, and reframing, Weems adapts Moore’s images of the 1963 Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama—widely distributed via Life Magazine and credited as a catalyst for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The images document Black students marching against legalized school segregation and being met with attack dogs and high-pressure fire hoses.

The title’s reference to “blues” calls to mind both mourning and the police, while “pinks” introduces a dissonant, almost tender counterpoint. Together, the colors, reminiscent of bruised skin, evoke the residual marks of violence. By altering and reframing recognizable archival images, Weems transforms historical documentation into a meditation on how such images circulate and endure.

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026, the installation of Blues and Pinks 3 invites reflection on the country’s origins in resistance and rebellion. In Boston—where events such as the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre helped ignite the American Revolution—public dissent is often celebrated as foundational to democracy. This Collection Spotlight complicates this legacy, asking whose protests are remembered as patriotic and whose are policed as threats.