Week 2 Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman Photograph from Art-21 Characters 

The Cindy Sherman Effect By: Phoebe Hoban

“Her work has in some ways presaged the media age that we live in now and also absolutely responds to it,” says MoMA photography. Curator Eva Respini,




Cindy Sherman has a unique authentication.

and each character or photograph that she has played, she has channeled the actual character itself. Cindy has found a way to be true a master in disguise. In Art 21| Characters. Cindy Sherman mentions how she feels “she doesn’t know how to set her models up or tell them how to pose. But I feel she naturally uses her instinct to see what will truly capture the image.

As stated in the article By: Phoebe Hoban

“No wonder the work of so many artists parallels Sherman’s, or at least mines similar conceptual veins: role-playing and the nature of identity; sexual and cultural stereotypes; the pressure to conform to the images of perfection promulgated through television, film, and advertising.”

This really stuck out to me because in time when now it seems we are flushed with what is an ideal image of a female stereotype due to society’s cultural susceptible, norms. The Digital age and photo shop have changed what we may deem as cultural beauty standards or even as far as to say cultural appropriation. The reason I use that is for every Era or generation that society has their own set of beauty standards or style that seemed attractive and have changed over time. For many decades woman have been over sexualized. While trying to confirm to medias beauty standards woman have either been told we need more or we either have to much. Creating dystopian form of beauty standards




New York Times Magazine| Ugly Beauty By: Paul Sehgal

“With the Instagram series, Sherman isn’t riffing on recognizable archetypes. Her new mock self-portraits are of ordinary people, albeit cartoonishly caricatured. They are some of the first pure protagonists in Sherman’s work: These women are not metaphors, they are not waiting to be represented, rescued or destroyed. They are gloriously, catastrophically themselves, and we meet them on their own terms — as we so frequently meet each other — in stagy, embarrassing, endearing selfies launched into the world.”




I believe Cindy Sherman found a way to live in her truth after attempting 500 different characters for her images. Not only to say she has learned to be her best self. But I feel she has a greater appreciation for people and their unique flaws. To me she is creating more to the image but through what she interpretes from her muse’s. Some of the images have the rather same eyes like gloomy hopeless feeling of happiness or looking optimistic, with a bit of sadness. It’s surreal and I feel the colors represent much more than what it makes the image to be.




New York Times Magazine| Ugly Beauty By: Paul Sehgal

Sherman grew up feeling like an intruder. “It wasn’t that they didn’t like me, but I came along so late and they already had a family,” she told The Guardian in 2011. She started dressing up to woo them. “I felt like this straggler that was running after them, saying: ‘Hey, remember me?’ “




The fact that Cindy Sherman felt like an intruder in her own family could not have resonated any closer with me. Being one of the youngest in my family it has always made it hard to find your own voice. At times we may be riddled with how to fit in. With that being said it makes it harder to have confidence growing up. Or it may even feel like you are in the shadows of others. Sherman found her voice and a way to step out of societal roles. She created her own Utopia through art.

My version of one of her Character’s Photographs