Cindy Sherman

Sherman’s photography is a depiction of the different ways culture defines “woman.” Her art plays on the feminist idea that gender arises exclusively within culture and deconstructs dominant gender ideologies, representing the underside of popular culture’s definition of “woman.” Cindy Sherman is a female photographer who portrays female stereotypes of the 1950’s and 1960’s. When creating her images, she is not only the photographer but the subject as well. Sherman examines and distorts femininity as a social construct. “I like making images that from a distance seem kind of seductive, colourful, luscious and engaging, and then you realize what you’re looking at is something totally opposite,” she reflected.

For four decades, Cindy Sherman has probed the construction of identity, playing with the visual and cultural codes of art, celebrity, gender, and photography. Sherman was always interested in experimenting with different identities. As she has explained, “I wish I could treat every day as Halloween, and get dressed up and go out into the world as some eccentric character.”

Sherman has continued to transform herself, displaying the diversity of human types and stereotypes in her images.

From her history portraits (1981), exemplifies her use of theatrical effects to embody different roles and her lack of attempt to hide her efforts: often her wigs are slipping off, her prosthetics are peeling away, and her makeup is poorly blended. She highlights the artificiality of these fabrications, a metaphor for the artificiality of all identity construction. “I’m disgusted with how people get themselves to look beautiful; I’m much more fascinated with the other side,” she said in 1986.

PHOTO ANAYLYSIS

Within this image, Sherman has exaggerated features like her lips, eyelashes and hair to emphasize that femininity does not have to only fit the stereotype of beauty. Sherman stated “I’m disgusted with how people get themselves to look beautiful; I’m much more fascinated with the other side,” she said in 1986. Her poorly blended makeup is to deconstruct the femininity stereotype. Sherman also exaggerates the nose significantly which gives off the same effect. The background looks like a puzzle and this could signify the difficulty in trying to fit the beauty standards for a women.

Personally, I really like Cindy Sherman’s work as it decreases the pressure on women to be perfect and deconstructs the stereotype of beauty to be feminine. Sherman believes beauty comes from the inside and her images are a lovely and successful way to prove society that.