in what way is identity and autobiography expressed in the work of cindy sherman and jen davis?

“I am trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me.” 

Both this essay and my creative project is all about documenting, whether it be how I feel about myself and how my chosen photographers, Jen Davis and Cindy Sherman, reflect on their own personal experiences, both emotional and physical. The essay is going to delve into how both the photographers explore their identity and autobiography in their photographic work. My creative project will include self-portraits, landscapes, portraits and objects, to hopefully portray things about myself and my life. Jen Davis work shows a journey of self-discovery and portrays her feelings toward her looks. Our subject matters don’t align specifically, but there are some similarities, such as we both have taken self-portraits that show how we feel about ourselves. Cindy Sherman’s work is mainly role play, challenging gender stereotypes ; she dresses up as different types of people and poses for the camera, with a nod to cinematic scene portrayal. This is a kind of tableau, with carefully chosen locations, backdrops and props. However in an article she does explain that she does sometimes see herself in her images. 

The photographers that I am studying in detail, Jen Davis and Cindy Sherman, both explore identity and autobiography in their work, however they both use different genres of photography to do this. Cindy Sherman’s work relates to the post-modernism genre, as she doesn’t hide where she gets her inspiration for her work from but instead, she genuinely mocks it. All of her images have a ridiculing element to them, whether it maybe through her makeup, clothing or ridiculous props that are featured in her images. Her images literally poke fun at what society expects women to look like. The post-modernism genre was first seen in the 20th century, when architects criticised the style of the modernist architecture for being too formal, austere and functional. Post-modernist photographers, including Barbara Kruger, Corrine Day and Hannah Starkey, use their work to build on the themes and conceptual ideas that began during the modernist period.

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A quote I found (Susan Bright (2010) Autofocus) aligns directly with what Sherman wanted to do with her photography, “postmodern thinking led to a radical shift in the way that the body was presented and understood”, in the sense that her work has changed how viewers look at the female body. Jen Davis work relates to realism, even though her images are reconstructed, she hopes to document her own issues with her body and relationships and intimate fantasies with men. Realism came about in the 1940’s and aimed to provide an accurate representation of the real world, real problems, real life. The images, relating to realism were made to look more like photographs than art and were a reaction to pictorialism. Artists that are known in the realism genre, are Paul Strand, Dorothea Lange and Jacob Riis. I found a quote (Susan Bright (2010) Autofocus) that relates to Jen Davis photography work, “photographers have produced large bodies of work consisting of frank and intimate portraits and self-portraits that explore the gritty, bohemian lives of those around them and act as important documentation of the times they capture”, in the sense that the images that Jen Davis took over the span of 11 years investigated many aspects of her life, that wouldn’t have probably been explored without this project.

Jen Davis investigates identity and autobiography in her photographic project, Eleven Years, where she produced a large amount of beautiful self-portraits, using natural light and strong compositions, over the span of 11 years. In the project Davis images portray the ideas beauty, sense of identity and her struggles with her body image. In an article on (clampart (2014) https://clampart.com/2014/04/eleven-years/#thumbnails) Jen Davis describes the idea of ‘Eleven Years’ was to ” invite the viewer into the past eleven years of my private life, exploring the vulnerabilities… body, feelings of isolation, the battle to recognise beauty, a quest for intimacy, and sense of acceptance through the camera’s eye”. To me ‘Eleven Years’ does just that, it does allow the viewer to understand who Jen Davis really is, what she internally struggles with, and tells a story of her journey of change. As you flick through the photo book that she produced, her story starts to unravel before your eyes and it is clear that the person in the photo in the first image is not the same in the last image, but a different, more established version of Jen Davis. Davis cleverly describes how she personally feels about beauty and what she has captured within her images, “I couldn’t necessarily identify with the idea of someone seeing me as ‘beautiful,’ but I could accept that the pictures that I created and inhabited were.” clampart (2014) https://clampart.com/2014/04/eleven-years/#thumbnails) Essentially what Davis feels is that she cannot be beautiful but the images that she took were, is that because she could carefully compose them and enhance things that real life shows? Or was it because she felt she could truly be herself in front of camera? Why didn’t she feel beautiful?

This image is may relate to the way Davis feels about herself and lack of self-confidence. The light in this image is natural, which seeps through a gap and allows some light to shine on the face, illuminating the features. This aspect is truly beautiful and idyllic. Jen Davis employs compositional and lighting techniques that are reminiscent of The Dutch Masters. The Dutch Masters used and painted light in a very clever way, by featuring windows in their paintings. By adding these elements they illuminated the main element of the image. Jen Davis has done this multiple times throughout her book, projecting light onto herself. Did she do this to illuminate other things? To illuminate how the way she feels about herself contrasts with the way society views her.

A question that is created by this image is one of, what is she thinking about? What is running through her mind during this image was being taken? Is she thinking about how she feels about herself? Is she reflecting on how she felt during a part of her life? This aspect is unknown to the viewer but is what makes the image so powerful. This aspect is under the interpretation of the viewer and the viewer only. During my creative process I have taken many self-portraits and struggled to look back at them. It’s an interesting and weird feeling seeing yourself as if you were one of your friends looking at you. The criticism I felt towards myself was shocking. In an article (Diana Spechler (2012) https://www.oprah.com/health/jen-davis-self-portraits-weight-loss-and-photography/all), Jen Davis describes how she felt during her creative process, “It was like I was taking self-portraits,” she says, “except I wasn’t in them.”, it’s fascinating to think how Davis and myself feel so detached from the portraits of our own self, even though it is clearly us, as we know what we look like. Maybe it’s because we have our own perspective of ourselves and so does everyone else, but the self-portraits show us how we are seen in the world, reality. This quote from Davis creates the interesting question of does she lack identity? Or does she just lack the confidence to see herself within an image she took. Jen Davis work relates clearly to autobiography, not just because she tells her own story but because she investigates real and unconventional struggles of the life she lives.

Cindy Sherman cleverly investigates identity and autobiography in her work, which consists of hundreds of self-portraits where she dresses up in different outfits, puts strange make up and wears extravagant wigs, to alter her person to become a different one to portray different characters and story lines. These portrays explore identity and gender, and were made to intentionally mock how society expects women to dress, act and be. In the project, Complete Untitled Film Stills, where she created film-like stills by dressing up as different characters from mid-20th-century B movies and photographed herself in various locations. These images quickly became very popular and were used to spark up conversations on feminism, postmodernism and representation. In an article, Sherman described how she felt during her childhood. She was the youngest child and felt, in order to gain the attention of her family she would have to be different, and she achieved this by dressing up and changing her appearance. She made a clever statement in the article which I feel explains her intentions of all of her projects, “if you don’t like me this way, how do you like me this way?”. On the surface her images may not seem like they are about herself, but maybe if you look deeper, they are, maybe she enjoys changing her appearance, identity, herself entirely, even it is just for a photograph, for a split second. Is dressing up a part of an act of escapism for Sherman, but the question is what, what is she escaping?

The colours that are incorporated in this image are garish and bright, and don’t really complement each other, but clash. The background is almost over powering of the face within the image, was this the purpose? It brings about the question of what relevance does it have to the face that Sherman has portrayed. The lines within the background lead the viewers eye towards the face in the image. Overall, this image has a high level of composition. Who is Cindy Sherman trying to be here? Someone who likes to look pretty and glamorous? However, she seems to be mocking them, as the makeup is over the top and excessive. So, does she pretend to be different people to almost try and gain attention from people to make up for the lack of recognition from her family. During her childhood Sherman was obsessed with her appearance, and enjoyed to wear makeup, so does this image relate to her past self, and maybe she is mocking who she was? Her film stills were left untitled, and a critique to her work stated (Simon Hattenstone (2011), me, myself and i, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jan/15/cindy-sherman-interview), “All the photos are untitled – another way of distancing herself from the images.” But why did she want to do this? Was it because secretly the images were about herself and did depict who she really was? In another article, Sherman describes how she feels now about her own photographs, “I am a little more comfortable now in letting parts of myself show through.”, does this now mean that she is part of the photographs and they are intentionally about her, or still does she still have a detachment from them and herself within them. A quote from an article describes exactly how I feel about Shermans work, “through the use of their bodies, artists constantly question what it means to be human”. 

Although this project is solely inspired by Jen Davis and Cindy Sherman, I have explored some differences during the progression of my project. All of our work is based on identity ;who we are and who we are not, who we strive to be and our internal monologue/autobiography. However, my work has become very abstract and some of the images are centred around things I love. The work I have produced have abstract meanings and when some people look at what I done may not understand what I am trying to portray and to be honest some of the things don’t even really make sense to myself. Like what is life, what is love, what is rebellion? Where does love come from? Why do we rebel? How have I rebelled, or have even I rebelled at all? My work itself is an act of rebellion. By taking pictures of things of I shouldn’t and when I shouldn’t, I have essentially rebelled. My work is also an act of love. By taking pictures in order to learn more about myself, and to document things, places, feelings and people I love. The similarities between mine and Cindy Shermans work is that by taking self-portraits we have explored who we are, and use make up to explore ourselves. After an in-depth study of Cindy Shermans work it is apparent that her images are made to show different characters and not herself. The differences between mine and Cindy Shermans work is that she intends to change her identity by dressing up and looking different. Does she dress up as people she wants to be and regrets not being? Her whole project is solely self-portraits that portray and mock societies views on women and how they should look, act and what they should become. We have seen this in the earlier work of Claude Cahun too ; body image, gender roles and stereotypes are pushed and pulled around. The viewer is left to make concious decisions about what it is they are seeing. The similarities between mine and Jen Davis work is that by taking self-portraits we have explored the idea of beauty, both within ourselves and others, and learnt things about ourselves. The differences between mine and Jen Davis work is the solely took self-portraits and looked in detail into her fantasies and how she yearns for intimacy. Over the span of 11 years Davis explored the relationships she had had and included many of them in her work. Overall, the photographers that I have studied have inspired my creative processes but have also allowed myself to explore different ideas too. 

bibliography

• Susan Bright (2010) Autofocus
• clampart (2014) https://clampart.com/2014/04/eleven-years/#thumbnails
• Diana Spechler (2012) https://www.oprah.com/health/jen-davis-self-portraits-weight-loss-and-photography/all
• Simon Hattenstone (2011), me, myself and i, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jan/15/cindy-sherman-interview