Carrie Mae Weems: Retrospective of 40 years of photographs

Carrie Mae Weems is the first African-American woman to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim.

A renowned visual artist best known for her Kitchen Table series, Weems started taking photographs in 1973. It was her 20th birthday and her boyfriend gave her a camera as a gift.

"The camera gave me an incredible freedom," she says. "It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely."

In her photographic series and video installations, Weems deals with themes such as gender, race and inequality. She is interested in the "negotiation of power between man and woman, black and white, poor and rich".

Images courtesy of Carrie Mae Weems and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Produced by the BBC's Anna Bressanin