Photographer Carrie Mae Weems has reimagined one of her most famous series for an advertising campaign for Bottega Veneta, this time starring rapper A$AP Rocky.
The campaign, which was announced in honor of Father's Day last Sunday, is called “Portraits of Fatherhood.” In addition to still images, the campaign also features videos of the rapper playing with his children Riot Rose and RZA Athelston. Part of the campaign also features a photo of Weems standing behind A$AP Rocky as he sits in front of a mirror at his kitchen table.
The latter image is an autoallusion to Weems' most acclaimed painting. Kitchen Table Series: Untitled (Man and Mirror)1990. In the work, Weems sits at her kitchen table with a man leaning towards her, as she looks back at the viewer and exchanges glances.
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The Kitchen Table Series also includes other shots in which Weems poses as a mother, daughter, and other less identifiable figures. The work deals with the fluid self and the many roles black women take on, but these themes aren't always immediately accessible, which is why the series is considered groundbreaking by critics. As Weems herself once said, “I [the series is] It's important in relation to the Black experience, but it's not a race issue.”
Bottega Veneta's creative director, Mathieu Brazy, said: GQ He intended to bring out similar ideas by commissioning Weems to create these new works.
“I'm honored that she brought her lens and vision to this project with Rocky, exploring fatherhood and what it means today,” Blasey said. “The photographs show the realness of Rocky as a father and a man beyond his public figure. The first thing that struck me about the photographs is their intimacy.”
Weems wrote on Instagram that he dedicated his Bottega Veneta commission to “every father who dares to dream, and every father who dares to love.”
The campaign was launched less than a week before a Weems exhibit opens at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in upstate New York. The exhibit, set to open June 22, will highlight lesser-known parts of Weems' work, including her recent photographs of boarded-up storefronts during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
