Artist 3: Cindy Sherman

Because I love her.
I know, everyone has heard of Cindy Sherman. (If not, shame on you, haha)
But I had to write a post about her, and sooner rather than later. So, today I looked through her MoMA exhibit. Which was great. Of course, because it's Cindy Sherman.

She is the queen of costumed, self-posed, identity-exploring photography. Her photos draw from famous movies and paintings and explore issues of gender, age, and cultural aesthetics.

I especially noticed looking through the exhibition site, the way she plays with composition. She likes to use angles, especially in her earlier photos. There are all kinds of angles in those photos, and she uses them to balance the composition and draw the viewer's attention where she wants it. In other photos, she imitates a famous composition, but brings new contemporary elements to it. There are also a few that are zoomed way out. So, she's in the picture but she's pretty small. But still you know she's there, because she is always in her photos, so you look for her. It is very sneaky and cool.

In general, she uses viewer expectations of what a portrait or a certain kind of composition should show and twists them. I liked that a lot. I think it would be interesting to incorporate some kind of hide and seek using maybe distorted kinds of perspective or strange framing into my own work to play on viewer expectations of a portrait, to help explore some of my own themes.



P.S. Here is the link for the MoMA exhibition. You should definitely check it out!