Cindy Sherman: Lack of Identity in Self-Portraits
Cindy Sherman, a modern female photographer, captures herself in a series of self-portraits from the late 1970s to contemporary time. Although Sherman photographs herself, she takes on different roles and personas within the images and subtly addresses gender and popular culture issues.
Her playfully ironic photographs of the nameless Hollywood celebrity, the young girl in the big city and the housewife fantasizing about escaping reality, capture the essence of the American dream and are tied together through Sherman’s constructed identities. The result is a terrific blend of reality and fiction, and one’s perception of self in relationship to the stereotypes defined by American culture.
Within Sherman’s series of self-portraits she simultaneously appears as herself and as some unknown character. Her lack of identity within the images makes them all the more enjoyable as they actively capture our own desires and dreams for a created identity. In a 1990 New York Times article Sherman stated, “I feel I’m anonymous in my work. When I look at my pictures, I never see myself; they aren’t self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear.”
I love escaping into the created reality of these photographs and I hope you will too! Enjoy!
