Tableaux

Biography – Cindy Sherman – Photographer, Model, Director, Actor, Avant-Garde Images, Doll Parts and Prosthetics, Movies, www.cindysherman.com/biography.shtml.

Cindy Sherman advocated for injustice in Gender and Sexual Orientation. She played a crucial role in shaping the way people view females and tackled many stereotypes that males and females became accustomed to. Some of her shots, including this one, depict a female that is staring at the light to create a dramatic effect in light of anxiety or fear and she succeeded by bringing to the attention of the viewers that this is a common occurrence where people may feel anxious or scared from a situation they were put in. At first glance, I can tell how much effort she put into assigning a voice to the way people feel when they are put into these stereotypical situations. She went beyond the restrictions of own personality and spent a substantial amount of time transforming herself into different characters, in order to speak to the people who may correlate themselves to these characteristics. It may not be easy to speak about these feelings of anxiety, and her implementation of publicity impacted thousands of people who viewed her work.

This photograph specifically tackles this sort of feeling that people get when they may be insecure, anxious, paranoid, scared, etc. She allows viewers to be open to their own interpretations of the way her characters are feeling, which is why her work is so controversial and influential.