What Is Cindy Sherman's Identity

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Cindy Sherman was well known for her photographs that looked like they were stills from films. They are staged portraits of herself in clothing that suites the background and it seems as though she is an actor in a film. The décor, lighting, clothing and the scene is exquisitely prepared and directed as that of a real film. Sherman dressed up as characters when she was young initiating a passion for characters and recreating the images on screen to a photograph. Collections of wigs, costumes, makeup, prosthetics and props, the artist has transformed her physique and surroundings to create countless displays, from screen siren to clown to aging socialite. Over the past 35 years, Sherman has sustained a challenging analysis into the nature of…show more content…
Sherman wanted to call into question the seductive and oppressive influence of mass media over our individual identities. Turning the camera on herself in stretched role playing of fictional Hollywood, style, advertising, and "girl-next-door" roles and poses, Sherman ultimately called her audience's attention to the dominant equipment and make-up that lay behind the limitless images circulating in public and culture. Sexual desire and domination, the fashioning of self-identity as mass deception, these are among the unsettling subjects lying behind Sherman's extensive series of self-portraiture in various guises. Sherman's work is central in the era of intense consumerism and image proliferation at the close of the 20th century. Recalling a long tradition of self-photography and theatrical role-playing in art, Sherman uses the camera and the several tools of the everyday cinema, such as makeup, costumes, and stage scenery, to recreate common illusions, or iconic "snapshots," that signify various concepts of public
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