Artist 102 Cindy Sherman Feminism Photography
Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American photographer and film director, as a visual artist she is known for her conceptual portraits.
Sherman challenges the very role of photographer by turning the camera upon herself and becoming the central figure in the majority of her work. But her art is not self-portraits. She interrogates the self in its contemporary environment; multiple, sexual, and above all, ambiguous.
“For Kristeva the abject is on the side of the feminine; it stands in opposition to the patriarchal, rule bound order of the symbolic.” Lynda Nead
The early work by Cindy Sherman uses predefined languages to disrupt patriarchal institutions in order to define woman as dominant.
As culture is governed by a male dominated law (where women’s rights have been historically repressed), the subversive work produced can be understood as protests that attempt to deconstruct male defined representation of women.
Sherman is known for her post-modernistic appropriation of the cinematic entertainment genre.
Sherman’s photography simultaneously establishes and undermines the conventions of representation, implying a lack of ‘natural’ female identity.
Instead, femininity is a sociological construct that is ‘multiple, fractured, and yet each of its infinite surfaces give the illusion of depth and wholeness” Judith Williamson