“Untitled Film Still #6” by Cindy Sherman
http://www.cindysherman.com/images/photographs/UntitledFilmStill6.jpg
Cindy Sherman grew up in Long Island with a family that was never very in touch with the arts. When she became curious of this world, she entered art school after high school to discover a new passion and naturally migrated towards painting. After a short amount of time, Sherman concluded that painting only allowed her to copy other art, while if she had picked up a camera, she could just put her time and energy into her own idea, thus starting her interest in photography. After school, Cindy moved to New York and began shooting pictures of herself- but not a self portraits. These photos are some of, if not the most photos she has to date – titled “United Film Stills”. These include Cindy in different poses, themed outfits, wigs, and character roles all go different representations of women’s so-called roles in society. Each of her photos is unique and somehow never hints at Sherman’s personality at all. Her later work touched on grotesque, deformed, fairytale and sex centered photos. Many of these had the purpose of shocking Sherman’s audiences with the positions and substances used. For this blog post, I have chosen the one titled “Film Still #6” because of Sherman’s unique pose and doughy eyes. I feel that this picture is giving off the idea of Sherman specifically posing the same way that “beautiful women” have been shown in art throughout the years – mainly by male artists. The idea of beauty from a male’s perspective has created a massive uproar of conversation within the past few decades, and something that cannot just be decided. Sherman is also holding a mirror in this photo, which I interpret as her nod to women and their vanity. This says something about how much women supposedly care about how they look and their beauty over many other things in life.