Welcome to Spring Term

I'm starting the spring semester, but winter is starting outside. I visit the Neoteric Photography blog looking for inspiration and ideas. Yes, it's time for women. I'm ashamed to say it, but I don't know much about women photographers. This may be a good time to change it and catch up.

I'm starting with Cindy Sherman. I saw some of her photos, without knowing the author or who took them. I read on the Hauser&Wirth website that Cindy Sherman is an American born in 1954 in Glen Ridge. In the 1970s, she studied photography at Buffalo State College, and later moved to New York, where she spent the rest of her artistic life. (Hauser&Wirth)

According to The Broad, Cindy Sherman's photographs are self-portraits in which Sherman shows women in stereotypical scenes, and takes inspiration from film scenes, advertisements and paintings. Her first photos were in black and white, and the series of photos was titled ,Untitled Film Still'. (The Broad)

Cindy Sherman described her work this way: , I am trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me'. As Ricci writes in her article, in her portraits we see Cindy Sherman dressing up, playing the roles of various women, from housewives to cowgirls and library ladies, always using characteristic props, outfits from the 50s and 60s, disguises and pearls. (B. Ricci)

                                                  Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still 17, 1978

When I saw her work, I really liked the self-portraits from the 1980s, in which Cindy Sherman was inspired by Italian painting. 

                                              Cindy Sherman, Untitled 193, 1989

According to The Broad, the series of these portraits is color ful, larger in size, and we see people who could have been painted with Raphael's brush in the 15th century. We also see later paintings in the portraits. The woman in them is often naked and her breasts are visible. Many critics praised her work for referring in these self-portraits to the characteristic features of period painting. They showed the stereotypical image of women in the eyes of men. (The Broad)

References

Hauser&Wirth, Cindy Sherman, Available at: https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/33676-cindy-sherman/ (Accessed 14.01.2024)

The Broad, Artist Bio - Cindy Sherman, Available at: https://www.thebroad.org/art/cindy-sherman?page=1 (Accessed 14.01.2024)

Ricci, B., Portraits of America: Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills, Artland Magazine, Available at: https://magazine.artland.com/portraits-of-america-cindy-shermans-untitled-film-stills/

 (Accessed 14.01.2024)