According to photographer Cindy Sherman, "The male half of society has structured the whole language of how women see and think about themselves." In "Untitled Film Stills" (1977-1980), Sherman featured herself in various guises that resemble stock characters from Hollywood melodramas,...
[more]According to photographer Cindy Sherman, "The male half of society has structured the whole language of how women see and think about themselves." In "Untitled Film Stills" (1977-1980), Sherman featured herself in various guises that resemble stock characters from Hollywood melodramas, providing a Postmodern commentary on the stereotyped roles of women as depicted by men in movies, television, advertising, fashion spreads, and magazine centerfolds. Art critic Arthur C. Danto said of the series: "The stills are in no sense pornographic, but they are what we may call 'pornographic functions,' variables for which we substitute the values of our own dark sexual fears."
Using makeup, wigs, costumes, props, and settings that imply a narrative or portray an emotional state, she displays astonishing versatility in her portrayals of diverse roles. "In a way, I'm a Performance artist," she has mused. "I was influenced more by Performance art than by photography or art."
By 1987, Sherman had moved away from portraying women. Instead, she made herself up hideously to resemble creatures of indeterminate gender; employing eerie fairy tale-inspired settings, these photographs focus on a more general representation of repressed fear. Finally, she took herself out of her photographs altogether, save for stand-in plastic body parts strewn over desolate landscapes of organic matter in various stages of decomposition.
Andy Grundberg has written that Sherman's vision is charged with "two major tensions: one that pits the determined stylization of references to popular imagery against the immediacy of her own presence, and one that pits woman-as-temptress against woman-as-victim." In recent years, Sherman has resumed the practice of photographing her own face, this time in a series referring to the conventions of portraiture as practiced by the old masters. She has also tackled landscapes, creating disturbing visions that concern everything from eating disorders to sexuality, death, madness, and dismemberment.
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