Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman is a New York based photographer born in 1954. She studied at Buffalo State College, originally interested in painting but continued on her work through film and photography. Sherman's main subject matter is herself. She creates self portraits portraying different personas and assumed roles. Many would try to label her work as feminist, though she would not.
I am incredibly drawn to the work of Cindy Sherman because of her basic principles of self portraiture. I've realized that my work has many parallels to hers. She also uses herself as the only model and acts out roles to be portrayed in her images. One main difference between our works is that my situations are not fabricated, and along with acting out other personas I also often portray myself within the images. I find Cindy Sherman to be a great inspiration to my work, though our motives in creation and production style are different. There is something to be said about the repetition of the same face and the acting out of a character in front of a camera that tends to draw a viewer in. It stops being documentary and begins to be something more. Something alive.
"When I moved to New York, in the summer of ’77, I was trying to think of a new way to take pictures and tell a story. David Salle had been working at some sleazy magazine company where they had lots of shots of half-clothed women around, for those photo-novellas, like a cartoon but with photos. Slightly racy. It got me thinking, this cheap, throwaway image—if you just look at one, you make up your own story. "
Stevens, Mark. New York. http://nymag.com/anniversary/40th/culture/45773/. 2008. Web.
"It was exactly like that. I did try using family members or friends, and once I paid an assistant. But even when I was paying somebody, I still wanted to rush through and get them out of the studio. I felt like I was imposing on them. Also, I got the feeling that they were having fun, to a certain extent, thinking this was like Halloween, or playing dress-up. The levels I try to get to are not about the having-fun part. I also realised that I myself don't know exactly what I want from a picture, so it's hard to articulate that to somebody else - anybody else. When I'm doing it myself, I'm really just using the mirror to summon something I don't even know until I see it. "
Berne, Betsy. TATE Magazine. http://www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue5/sherman.htm. Web.
Gagosian Gallery:
No comments:
Post a Comment