This print by Carrie Mae Weems (born Oregon, 1953) was made for The Rivington Place Portfolio (see E.163:1 to :9-2009). She is best characterised as an artist who uses photography; her work invariably has an implicit socio-political message, often with herself as an actor in a narrative which draws on historical incident and links past and present, art and reality. This print derives from her experience of a scholarship to Rome in 2006 when she took the opportunity to travel to major European cities, seeking out symbolic architecture and recording her own presence in these places, both as an individual and as a signifier of the black presence in history and society. Here she positioned herself as observer/outsider at the entrance to the British Museum; the dress and pose of the figure can be read as both contemporary and historic, and her position - apart, back turned to the viewer - imply some uncertainty or ambiguity : confrontation as well as contemplation, exclusion as well as belonging.