Weekly Selfie #2

 

I Have a Very Small Kitchen

Cindy Sherman – Untitled Film Stills #10, 1978

The Cindy Sherman Effect

Quote 1

    "A number of younger artists are very much indebted to Sherman in their exploration of not just identity but also the nature of representation. Now we all take it for granted that a photograph can be Photoshopped. We live in the era of YouTube fame and reality-TV shows and makeovers, where you can be anything you want to be any minute of the day, and artists are responding to that. Cindy was one of the first to explore the idea of the malleability or fluidity of identity."

    

    Cindy Sherman used makeup to completely change her face and become different people for her photos. Sometimes people will change their face with either makeup or photo editing to fit an aesthetic. I don’t really think it counts as changing into a different person unless that is what the poster is specifically doing, but a lot of content creators are, and the article attributes that to Cindy Sherman.

Quote 2

    "With Photoshop anything goes, and I don’t want to make easy crazy characters just because I can. I think there are some artists who are fine without any boundaries. It somehow frees them. But I really need certain limitations to know how far I can go and work within that."

    Artists have a choice on each piece they make on how many limits they want to place on themselves, and while the unlimited freedom of photoshop can expand what an artist does in a piece, working under limitations, self imposed or not, can be helpful to an artist as without limits a piece can become overwhelming.

The Ugly Beauty of Cindy Sherman

Quote 1

    "Are these women insisting on being seen or are they taunting us, mischievously playing on fears of female ugliness, of becoming old and absurd or just invisible? That slipperiness in her work — does she see people clearly out of kinship or cruelty? — becomes complicated here by her ambivalence about aging."

    Since she photographs herself the characters in her photos will all be similar in age to her it can become hard to tell when interpreting her work if she is creating commentary on age and beauty, or if she herself is aging and that's all there is to it.

Quote 2

    "...Sherman’s work resonates so much with viewers because she involves them: “It’s really this kind of contract with Cindy and the viewer, that the viewer will suspend disbelief and go with her.”"

    Because we know that all the photos are actually Cindy Sherman manipulating herself into different characters, we as viewers must suspend our disbelief to see those characters and imagine what their lives are like and in doing that it involves the viewer of the photo more which makes them more compelling.