Since her time at graduate school in Buffalo, New York, where she met fellow postmodern photographers Charles Clough, Robert Longo, and Cindy Sherman, Carey has investigated and questioned the basic assumptions of photography, attempting, as she has put it, to “free the picture from the tyranny of photography’s historical imperative to record and reveal ‘things.’”

In 1983 she was invited to join Polaroid’s Artist Support Program, which provided material and equipment support to a range of artists including Andy Warhol and Dawoud Bey. Carey started experimenting with Polaroid’s mammoth 20-by-24-inch instant camera. Constraints—including the difficulty of maneuvering the 240-pound camera and its shallow depth of field—led her to create a series of complex self-portraits using pre-digital manipulation, including multiple exposures, colored lights, and intervening materials. In this example she placed acetate, used for transparencies and film, in front of the lens to create a pattern that unifies the artist and her chosen medium.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)