Poor,

black,

working-class

and

woman.

What

Carrie

Mae

Weems'

exhibition

in

Turin

looks

like.

“Poor, black, working class, and a woman to boot”: this is how Carrie Mae Weems defined herself in her master’s thesis at the University of California, San Diego, made between 1978 and 1984 and which later became the series Family Pictures and Stories, exhibited as part of Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter at Gallerie d’Italia - Turin through Sept. 7, 2025. It is a project that interweaves photography and storytelling, similar to a visual diary that juxtaposes snapshots of her family members in Portland, Oregon, with captions describing their personalities and biographical events. After this debut, encouraged by her teachers to place herself and her historical perspective at the center of her research, Weems embarked on a path that in fifty years has made her a protagonist of civic debate around issues of race, consent, social class, representation, gender issues and stereotypes, history and collective memory.