Unititled Film Still #14, 1978© Metro Picture Gallery & Cindy Sherman
By turning the camera on herself, Cindy Sherman has built a name as one of the most respected photographers of the late twentieth century. Although the majority of her photographs are pictures of her, these photographs are most definitely not self-portraits. Rather Sherman uses herself as a vehicle for commentary on a variety of issues of the modern world: the role of the woman, the role of the artist and many more. She is known for her carefully composed photographic tableaux that draw on such familiar genres as porn centrefolds, fashion photos and film noir. Posing as subjects who inhabit these genres. Her photos deliberately mimic certain genre conventions but in a manner that shows them as being slightly skewed. At the age of 23 she created a set of 69 "Untitled Film Stills", in which she dressed up as a strangely familiar yet unnamed actress in shots reminiscent of foreign films, B-movies and film noir. The black and white shots, which Sherman completed in 1980, launched her career.
“Sherman has a history of a kind of withdrawal, a market retreat--a production of images that dare the rich to buy them. But while that may be part of the story, it ascribes too simple a motivation to an artist who watches the people who interest her so intently, identifies with them so fully, that she temporarily becomes them.”(1)
I do believe that Sherman relates to our SPI genre as not only enacts the characters that she mimics, but she has a quite sculptural aesthetic to her photos.
More info:
(1) Frankel, David. "Cindy Sherman: Metro Pictures." Artforum International 47.6 (2009): 186. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 3 May 2010.
http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.library.usyd.edu.au/gtx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&docId=A201622555&source=gale&srcprod=EAIM&userGroupName=usyd&version=1.0
No comments:
Post a Comment