Cindy Sherman - Retrospective (Art Photo Ebook)

rashion, 1983, 1984, 1993, 1994
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major accomplishment of the mass-fashion industry was its ability to plumb the wells
of popular desire."
— Stuart and Elizabeth Ewen
Sherman has produced four groups of works that quote from fashion
photograph}-. The first series was commissioned by shop owner Diane
Benson in 1983 for a spread in Interview magazine. Provided with clothes
by such high-end designers as Jean-Paul Gaultier and Comme des
Gannons, Sherman created, not surprisingly, the antithesis of glamour ads.
In works such as Untitled #119 (plate 88) and Untitled #131 (plate 91),
the models look silly
but utterly delighted in their high-fashion frocks.
However other images are more sinister,
like the slightly deranged Untitled
#122 (plate 90). The second commission came from Dorothee Bis, a
French fashion company, which asked Sherman to produce
photographs featuring its designs for French Vogue. These images are even
more bizarre than the previous works, with the models looking
dejected in Untitled #13- (plate 94), exaggeratedly wrinkled in Untitled
#132 (plate 92), and even possibly homicidal in Untitled #138 (plate 95).
In
[993, Sherman created works for an issue of Harper's Bazaar.
Less dark than the works for Vogue, these images are fantastical and make
full
use of the clothes as costumes to completely transform Sherman
and turn backgrounds into theatrical settings. She produced the most
recent fashion shots for the Japanese fashion house Comme des
Gargons in 1994.
It seems inevitable that Sherman be drawn to create her own versions of
fashion spreads. Fashion is
yet another means of masquerade for
women, and ads for clothes promise to convert the buyer into a more perfect
version of herself. According to Joanne Finkelstein, "Fashion is
a
means by which images of the self can be created and displayed . . .
a greater diversity in styles of appearance has evolved so that we can now
act in the public domain as if we each possessed a multiplicity of
identities."-' Like all
advertisements, fashion photographs manufacture a
desire that can never be fulfilled.
We clamor for the latest style, which will
only be supplanted next year. Underlying the promise of originality
in high-fashion ads is, paradoxically, conformity to a prescribed look.
Sherman's Fashion photographs undermine the desirability of such images
by emphasizing their contrived nature.
Fairy Tales, 1985
In horror stories or in fairy tales, the fascination with the morbid is also, at least for me,
a way to prepare for the unthinkable. .
. . That's why it's very important for me to show the
artificiality of it all, because the real horrors of the world are unmatchable, and they're
too profound. It's much easier to absorb—to be entertained by it, but also to let it affect you
psychologically— if it's done in a fake, humorous, artificial way.
—Cindy Sherman
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