Here I will be comparing and contrasting one of my own outcomes and one image created by Cindy Sherman as she is who I feel has influenced me most and would therefore be good to compare my work with.

Cindy Sherman’s work shows the three-quarter length, Italian Renaissance-style portrait as Sherman takes on the persona of the Mona Lisa. Wearing a 15th-century style Italianate dress, Sherman allies herself with one of art history’s most famous, iconic paintings. I can compare this to my photograph as I have generated an image where my subject takes on the idea and almost persona of Anna Nicole Smith who became one of the most memorable of the Guess Girls. For my recreation I tried to create a recognisable image when placed next to the original but with slight differences, the original is seductive almost and I wanted to place a young ordinary girl in as the subject to produce different ideas of the way women are represented to show my subject in a way that people would normally be against, this idea of sexualising young girls is thought of as bad however a professional model was and sometimes still is okay which is the ideas I tried to take on with showing this advert in a different way. For Cindy Sherman the photograph of her as the Mona Lisa is no true replica, the photo is meant to call to mind the original, without literally copying it which is a little different to what I have done which shows a contrast between my work and Sherman’s. This idea of not literally copying is that Sherman creates a mental distance between the real and the imitation just barely apparent, yet somehow haunting. One might say that Sherman suggests that viewers rethink their familiarity with the original and question how its conventions of depiction continue to condition the way that even we, hundreds of years later, regard every representation of the ‘female’. This is some of the ideas I was trying to put across and as comparing the two photographs can show similarities in the way that they are set out and the production behind them howver also shows the contrasts in Sherman’s work and my recreations in the accuracy in the way they are produced.

From this photo shoot I have produced a set of images that I feel has the essence of Ansel Adams in and my inspiration can be clearly seen from them. I have decided not to edit these images or retouch them in any way because i tried to frame them correctly and i want them to be as they were taken as it was a set of images taken using 35mm film and I didn’t want to fix any ‘imperfections’ as they are are what make film photography what it is.

these contact sheets are to show a detailed progression of my thoughts and ideas on the subject of my chosen photographer. By doing this in the process i am understanding his way of working and his artistic eye and what he wants to capture emotionally and physically in the photo.