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Cindy Sherman & Hiroshi Sugimoto

Photography has long been more than merely a means of recording reality, though most people do think of photography as a journalistic or documentary device. Many artists in recent years have turned to the technology of photography as an alternative to artistic forms they believe are no longer viable or effective, or as a means of delving into certain aspects of their culture that they feel they cannot reach in any other way. The "reality" of the photograph is often an illusion, and what may seem to be apparent on the surface of a photograph may hide much deeper meanings and relationships if the viewer takes a closer look. Cindy Sherman is a leading American artist working through photography and showing a new range over the last twenty years. Hiroshi Sugimoto in Japan has come to the fore during that same period of time and experiments with images important in his culture and our own. A comparison of the two shows the range of photographic expression possible and some of the trends in photo art over the period in which they have been working.

Cindy Sherman was born in 1954 and debuted as a photographer with a series of black-and-white photographs in 1977-1980. In these photos, she herself appeared in a series of guises resembling nonspecific characters form Hollywood melodramas, providing a postmodern commentary on the stereotyped roles of women as depicted by men in movies, television, advertising, fashion spreads, and magazine centerfolds. She used makeup, wigs, costumes, props, and settings to imply a narrative or to portray an emotional state, and she accomplished this with great versatility through her control of lighting, angles, and spatial perspectives. By 1987, Sherman had moved away from portraying women and now focused on a more general representation of repressed fear. She made herself up hideously to resemble creatures of indeterminate gender in eerie settings inspired by fairy tales. In later works, she rem...

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Cindy Sherman & Hiroshi Sugimoto. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:37, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1702835.html