Weekly Selfie 2 | Cindy Sherman | Navdeep Sanghera

 

 Recreation

                                                                    Cindy Sherman | Untitled #70 (1980) 

            

                                                          Nighthawks | Edward Hopper (1942) 

I had chosen this photograph because it gives the esthetic of a B-movie. I imagine the location of the backdrop being inside a bar in the metro area. The dim orange light on Cindy's face captivated me because of the similar cinematography we see in films that utilize color. The photo has a noir relaxing style that reminds me of one of Edward Hopper's paintings Nighthawks. The narrative I had created in my mind was visiting and drinking late at night after a long day of professional work at a corporate job.

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The Cindy Sherman Effect Phoebe Hoban

A less conspicuous but equally important legacy is how her work has permanently blurred the line between fine art and photography.

Says Prager of Sherman’s influence, “She’s a woman commenting on women and so am I. I’m also attracted to the weird and bizarre, and she’s a master at that. I relate to her use of color, lighting, and the way her ‘scenes’ are mocked up in a way that is never too clean.”

Cindy Sherman is an avant-garde, she explored and experimented with the collision of film stills of the stereotyped characters and placed herself within that character, and as an actor, she acts out her role well to embody the character while combining how she interprets them to be in an act of imagination. We see a continuation of photography used to set up and create an act, to give the viewers an image to think and imagine upon. The Untitled Film Stills series grasped my attention as she directed a narrative for the female character along with setting up her composition within the frame. Cindy has left her work ambiguous to the viewer's imagination.

The Ugly Beauty of Cindy Sherman Parul Sehgal

Her first series, the landmark “Untitled Film Stills,” 1977-80, featured 70 black-and-white photographs of scenes from fictional films, inspired by Hitchcock and Antonioni. 

John Waters has called her a “female female impersonator.”

I absolutely love seeing her Untitled Film Stills series, now knowing she had re-created photographs of scenes from the films of famous successful film directors makes me more interested in these series. Cindy Sherman definitely enjoys seeing how others would perceive her series. They are imitations of the signature cinematographed style of film directors. As for her acting skills, Cindy goes well into each character treating it as if it was an actual life and carefully considering her next moves that would be appropriate to the character. Cindy Sherman plays the female characters in this series as feminine matching to how women were portrayed in Hollywood during the 1940s-1950s. Her studies from viewing the films of the past influenced her to create the Untitled Film Still series and her fascination with dressing up carried on from her childhood.