Cindy Sherman
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Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. 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.” Shortly after moving to New York, she produced her Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), in which she put on guises and photographed herself in various settings with deliberately selected props to create scenes that resemble those from mid-20th-century B movies. Started when she was only 23, these images rely on female characters (and caricatures) such as the jaded seductress, the unhappy housewife, the jilted lover, and the vulnerable naif . Sherman used cinematic conventions to structure these photographs: they recall the film stills used to promote movies, from which the series takes its title. The 70 Film Stills immediately became flashpoints for conversations about feminism, postmodernism, and representation, and they remain her best-known works.
“I wish I could treat every day as Halloween, and get dressed up and go out into the world as some eccentric character.”
–Cindy Sherman
Cinder Sherman’s work is based on how women were treated back in the olden days. She states that her photos show that she is an unhappy housewife, all her photos were self-portraits to help represent how badly women and wives were treated, her photos look very mysterious which helps us to identify what she was feeling. Although this photo isn’t very easy to consolidate, I can see that all her photos are in black and white and almost have this gradient effect on the photo. Having your photos in black in white for me makes the photo look more modern but in Cindy Sherman’s photos I believe it adds an emotion to the photo, it shows that she may be smiling on the outside but the inside she is really hurt and feels alone, she hasn’t got no one there for her. The photo has a main focus on Cindy and makes everything else in the background look a little bit blurrier, this helps us to see how Cindy has portrayed her emotions, to look happy but still hold some sadness. Cindy Sherman’s posture make the photo look a lot more mysterious as you really don’t know what she is up to.
Sherman has continued to transform herself, displaying the diversity of human types and stereotypes in her images. She often works in series, improvising on themes such as centrefolds (1981) and society portraits (2008). untitled #216, 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.