The selfie I decided to do was inspired by the simple details Cindy Sherman used in her photographs to alter the features of a face. I personally knew of Cindy Sherman as a weird photographer. I first heard of her in 2013, and she had already created different themes with her photos exposing odd ideas and uncomfortable images. After watching her documentary, I was mostly intrigued by the makeup used to change features. Frame to frame, one can see that each angle is slightly different but creates a whole new photo. I found this extraordinary considering it does not take a lot to change a photo. I genuinely find Cindy Sherman’s early works more profound and interesting than her bizarre work but she is so talented in creating stories behind these characters that I enjoy her photos regardless. Each character has it’s own personality and Cindy Sherman doesn’t use much to explain who the character is but we can see it well. I wanted to be able to create characters easily as she did. I wanted to use simple makeup and concentrate on the face. I decided one wasn’t enough so I did two.
As stated in “The Cindy Sherman Effect”, Cindy Sherman was the master of self morphing into so many different people. I may not do it as well as she can but I was able to think of two photos that were easy but different. The first photo is of an old person, inspired mostly by her images of older ladies with jewels and/or nudity. The second photo is more of a modern barbie doll, I specifically went with this due to the generation and media we are currently in. Cindy Sherman’s photos tend to hint of a time period and I wanted to do that as well. Reading articles on Cindy Sherman, I found that the articles concentrated on the persona she creates in each image and using herself as the model rather than getting others. Besides Cindy Sherman opening the boundaries of photography and creating something odd and intriguing to the public I found that Cindy Sherman took photographs to create evidence. This idea came after I read Susan Sontag’s “On Photography”. She states “Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we're shown a photograph of it.” and I find this to be true. Both of these photographers use photos to reveal a truth, evidence, an idea. Cindy Sherman brings out things not many would consider appropriate or beautiful. The ugly can be beautiful and the beautiful can be ugly.
As I scrolled through her images the ones I found that attempting at portraits on my own is a bit more difficult due to angles and timing. I aimed to have shoulders and up, a black background as well as bright lighting to achieve a theme throughout the photos. I wanted to be old. I loved the idea of making myself so much older and see almost like a glimpse of my future. I also wanted to look quirky and childish. The make up for the older face took a lot of time. I kept messing up lines and at one point I had to start over. I wanted something subtle but visible. As for the barbie doll photo, I had a colorful wig I had used for a cosplay and realized colored hair is popular and modern for a barbie which fell into the generation we are in. I attempted at making my eyes bright and my cheeks very pink. I finally had a reason to use that pink lipstick I bought but never opened. I was excited to create new characters. Though they didn’t come out exactly as I wanted them to, I felt surprised and relieved to see the results.
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