Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman, born in January 19, 1954, was an American photographer and a film director. Majority of Sherman’s photographs was of herself not as a portrait but as a photograph to raise issues of the modern world, some issues are about roles of women. Sherman raised issues about the role and representation of women in the society and the media with her photography. Cindy Sherman works alone in her studio being the author, make up artist, director, photographer and also the model.

Cindy Sherman took a series of photographs in which she acted out actresses in her film stills, her images looked like portraits but they were not actually about herself as she was always acting out a role. ‘Hence, viewers are not meant to understand these pictures as images of Sherman or of actual film stills, but as ironic readings, deliberate imitations, and self-conscious interpretations of style, gesture, and stereotypes.’ (Practices of looking, pg.255)

Sherman’s work was a response to the feminist criticism that challenged representations of women, and went along with the theory of “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, and also with the idea of Laura Mulvey who argued that women were used as passive objects for the visual pleasure of men.

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Reference: practices of looking, pg.255