Jim, if you choose to accept, the mission is to land on your own two feet, from the Kitchen Table Series

In this photograph—the first work in Carrie Mae Weems’s iconic Kitchen Table Series—a man sits at a table, drinking and smoking as he eyes the answering machine to his left. His collar is unbuttoned and the telephone receiver lies on the table, adding to the intrigue of the moment. The text at the bottom, which gives the work its title, plays on dialogue from the popular 1960s television series Mission Impossible. On the show, secret agents stage covert missions to prevent global disaster; in Weems’s ironic appropriation, Jim must accomplish the herculean task that is surviving racial inequity in America. As in many of her works, the story that Weems tells through text is not a didactic description of the photograph, nor is it entirely divorced from the visual narrative. By allowing text and image to function independently, Weems enables them to intersect variously, alternately disrupting or enhancing the fluidity of the work’s message.