Week 1 Blog: Cindy Sherman

#363 Untitled (Series: Bus Riders)

I'll start off by saying that I'm by no means an artist nor a fine arts major. In my honest opinion, art is subjective and really, "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder". -  Margaret Hungerford 
What I do believe, however, is that art is more prevalent in today's society much more than it was in the past. Just like people, art is very diverse and filled with different meanings and ideologies that the creator had in mind. My interpretation of Cindy Sherman is someone who found it fun dressing up and portraying different kinds of people as you clearly see throughout her career as a photographer. Although she has a collection of photographs that seem grim or related to the harshness of reality, I believe she still had fun making those and getting it just the way she wants it.

Reading articles about Cindy Sherman and people agreeing that she was a big influence in today's arts and theaters is amazing to me. I don't think Sherman expected this early on in her career and just thought of it as a past-time. In her documentary "Nobody's Here But Me", Sherman states "I don't look for things while I'm taking pictures, I just keep my eyes open for anything potentially weird". She isn't going out of her way to find something but more of what stands out to her. So why is that important? We all tend to look at things that might interest us or seems out of place somehow.

I chose Sherman's Bus Riders series because I liked the simplicity of the pose, which I initially thought at first glance. As I started to take my selfie, I really didn't like the first few so I started dressing differently. I took another few but then I didn't like the chair I was sitting in and got another one. I decided to also put a blanket in the background to kind of get a solid color or make it look like a photo shoot. I took some more selfies in different poses and ended up with the one you see. I think I was trying to portray a "cool" and laid-back male character. To be honest, I laugh at myself when I look at my photo because I don't ever think I would dress up like this and I don't think I ever put as much effort into this photo as I did with any other photos. I decided to make the photo black and white to give off an old image like Sherman's original photos in her Bus Rider series. I could say that I had some fun with this and could imagine why Cindy Sherman did what she did. My appreciation for Sherman's photographs has definitely gone up and made me realize how frustrating it can be to get that perfect picture.

References:
http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/untitled-363
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXKNuWtXZ_U