The Exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video has just opened to much acclaim at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.  We are deciding which train to take in to the city to see the show, which has spent the past 16 months traveling around the country – it opened in September 2012 at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, TN; from there it went to the Portland Art Museum (in the city where Weems was born) and The Cleveland Museum of Art before making its way now to the Guggenheim.  An accompanying book, edited by Kathryn E. Delmez and with essays by Kathryn Delmez, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Franklin Sirmans, Robert Storr, and Deborah Willis, was released by Yale UP in October of 2012; in a review in Essence, Patrik Henry Bass had this to say about the book:

“I have three words for Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video (Yale University Press): Wow. And wow. This stunning visual chronicle is packed with more than 200 of the Oregonian’s arresting images. It’s all in here, including The Kitchen Table Series, Weems’s 1990 groundbreaking tour de force.”

In addition to encouraging you to join us at the exhibition in New York, we’d like to give you a chance to win a copy of the book.  The first three respondents to correctly answer the following question will receive a copy of Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography.

In what year did Carrie Mae Weems get her first camera, and how old was she at the time?

Submission rules: Email your submission to yaleartbooks@gmail.com with the subject line: “Carrie Mae Weems Contest Submission” by March 1st to qualify. Please include your mailing address in the email.