Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

Carrie Mae Weems is one of the country’s most influential African American artists. For more than thirty years, she has created images that address issues of family, race, gender, cultural identity, and power in contemporary society. This print—the first work by Weems to enter our collection—shows a blurry, anonymous male figure in a hoodie from both a frontal and side view, like a nocturnal mugshot seen through a thermal-imaging camera. The work relates to Weems’s 2016 multi-media installation of the same title about police shootings of unarmed black men in the United States. In this image, the haunting apparition serves as a poignant reminder of these victims—whom the artist calls the “usual suspects.”