Cindy Sherman and Studio Session 5: An Awkward Approach

Cindy Sherman is well known in the world of photography. Specifically, for a series of portraits designed to be ambiguous and allow the audience to decide the lives of the subjects up until the moment is captured. The series known as 'Untitled Film Stills', spanning across three years, between 1977-180, did not even have individual names for the images. Each photo was assigned a chronological number following the words 'Untitled Film Still', giving nothing of the narrative away.

"A number of theories have emerged over the years" BBC quotes Paul Moorhouse in an article you can find here. "She neither endorses nor denies them." Sherman is trying to keep an air of mystery around the images, and it is clearly working! We may never know the real story behind the images, but it has led to the portraits still being relevant today, around forty years later.

The ambiguous nature of the images allows people to decide what they (the images) are trying to say in whatever context they (the audience) deem fit. This can potentially lead to them being used in a problematic circumstance. I.E, instead of empowering women, they could be used to oppress them, due to their meaning being so easy to be manipulated beyond the original intent.

The actual images themselves are very interesting to look at:

They raise multiple questions about identity within society in relation to women due to the vague nature of the images and the way the women seem almost out of place. With no narrative to the images, at least an official one given by Sherman herself, the women become essentially riddles with no identity of their own, blank stories waiting for people to project their own experiences onto them. With no reason given behind why they find themselves in certain places or different situations, a lot of the women look out of place. We can make educated guesses based on visual evidence about the women, but they are just that, educated guesses.

Take this image for example, 'Untitled Film Still #21' :

We see a black and white photo. Black and white photography is heavily associated with documentary style photography, due to its more simplistic nature. People will automatically assume that what they are seeing is some kind of truth. The photo is of a young woman possibly early to mid-twenties. She is dressed smartly and so we can assume she is educated, possibly middle class. Bates,2008 states "clothes indicate a great deal about someone social identity." She is wearing a little makeup, made more popular during that time due to the rise in women's liberation and feminism. Moving on to the angle of the image, by shooting at a lower angle, the subject takes up more of the frame and seems larger. This can give an illusion of power.

Despite all of this the most captivating, attention-grabbing part of the image is still the woman's countenance. The theory of the pose, by Holsbach 2008, implies that when we take a photo of ourselves, or someone takes a photo of us, we assume an identity separate from our authentic selves. "We show ourselves in a pose, but we also hide behind a pose." This is the idea that we show the camera only what we want the eventual audience to see. And as a photographer I also have influence over the way the model poses and the eventual outcome of the image.

To me it appears as if her visage is one of disgust. Her lips a parted and her brows are creased into a frown. Her gaze is off to the side, glaring at something off camera. Without knowing what she's staring at we cannot form any conclusion to the context of the image. So instead, the image feels sort of odd, like something is a miss or not quite right. This makes for an interesting photo as we begin to imagine possibilities of what might be causing the subject to become so distressed.

After discussing previous shoots with my professor, Alex Coles, we came to the conclusion that some of my images were more interesting to view than others, based on how Alex interacted with the images. The images we found more visually stimulating, were the ones I had taken fortuitously. They were images during which I was playing around with the lighting and setups, moments we were thinking about the next pose for the model to take. Just like Sherman's work, they appeared unusual, like something was not quite right.

I decided to go back into the studio and try to recreate some of the moments, a full shoot where the model looks out of place and uncomfortable. Now this was the complete opposite approach to how I normally shoot. Usually, my goal is to make the model as comfortable as I can, we put on music, chat beforehand, get a relaxed sort of vibe so that I can get the most out of my model. For this shoot I did none of that. I have worked with this model before and I know her personally, so it is a little harder to make someone you know in that respect, to feel uncomfortable around you. I had to adjust my own attitude when interacting with her. She did her own makeup for this shoot, but I had brought in my products for her to use. I put her in the base room and after saying nothing more than "hello, all my stuff is there for you to use." I left to set up the studio space, leaving her alone.

Once she was ready, I brought her into my bay. Already playing, was a Spotify playlist I had found of eery music, the kind you hear during horror films. On the screen in the bay, I had music videos playing but not just any music video. Before the shoot I had found a list of the 'thirteen scariest music videos of all time' compiled by Vulture magazine. I put them in my own playlist on YouTube and hit play. By bombarding the model, without warning, with eery music and creepy videos, it was no wonder she felt something more sinister was a foot. I think I managed to achieve a feeling of uneasiness in the model. I informed her I want her to be off with the camera, to act like she did not belong in front of it, as if she had essentially stumbled into the studio. Here are a couple images from that shoot:

As you can see from these two images, it seemed to have worked. The model is not at ease with the camera but instead is awkward around it, clashing with the yellow background that connotes happiness and cheerfulness. Her lips are pouting instead of smiling, just like the earlier image from Sherman, and for most of the photos she avoided looking at the camera almost as if she could not bring herself to directly address the audience. It also appears as if she is unsure of how to act. The poses are unnatural, her hands seemed to be all over the place like she does not know what to do with them.

I think in the kind of environment I created; people tend to start to act weird. By this I mean behaviour we do not normally expect of them. Due to the awkwardness of the situation, sometimes it is human nature to turn to humour as a tool to relax us.

This is how I got photos like the one above, because I had made the model feels so uncomfortable, she had begun acting in a way that would put herself more at ease.

While in this shoot, I managed to achieve what I set out to do at the start, I have decided I will not be continuing with this experiment. I am creating a body positivity book and I feel like having the models be uncomfortable in front of the camera is suggesting subtly that they are uncomfortable in their own skin. This is the exact opposite of the message I am trying to convey.

From here I am going to look at potentially moving to location shoots or maybe shooting in a way I can make the images more interesting to look at. I could bring the use of objects like mirrors into the studio to do this. I need to further explore and research this.

Blog word count: 1407

References:

• Bates, D. (2016). They Key Concepts Photography (2nd ed.). London: Bloomsbury
• Holschbach, S,(2008),The pose in Eskildsen,U.,Ebner,f,.Kaufman,B.,Street and Studio: An urban
  History of photography.London:Tate
• MoMA. (N.D). Cindy Sherman. MoMA. https://www.moma.org/artists/5392