Artist, model and photographer Cindy Sherman has been having a ball on Instagram posting selfies she distorted with the Facetune app and with the Youcam Makeup App. It appears the fun began on May 12th with a fairly mild version captioned with “New app Facetune. #notyourusualselfie” But since then she has pushed them (as she does with much of her work) beyond the odd and into the disturbingly delightful.
The artist/photographer, who secured her position in the New York art world with her late 1970’s Untitled Film Stills, continues her long history of theatrical self-portraiture. Only this time, it’s on social media instead of at a museum.
Sherman, who started out as a painter, turned to photography toward the end of the 1970s in order to explore a wide range of common female social roles, or personas. Sherman sought to call into question the seductive and often oppressive influence of mass-media over our individual and collective identities. Turning the camera on herself in a game of extended role playing of fantasy Hollywood, fashion, mass advertising, and “girl-next-door” roles and poses, Sherman ultimately called her audience’s attention to the powerful machinery and make-up that lay behind the countless images circulating in an incessantly public, “plugged in” culture. Sexual desire and domination, the fashioning of self identity as mass deception, these are among the unsettling subjects lying behind Sherman’s extensive series of self-portraiture in various guises. Sherman’s work is central in the era of intense consumerism and image proliferation at the close of the 20th century.(source)
Cindy Sherman Selfie Fun On Instagram
Below I am embedding many of her Instagram selfies in the order in which she posted them, so you can see the evolution for yourself.
First she began with an undistorted selfie on May 12th:
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And then the fun began.
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“We’re all products of what we want to project to the world. Even people who don’t spend any time, or think they don’t, on preparing themselves for the world out there – I think that ultimately they have for their whole lives groomed themselves to be a certain way, to present a face to the world.” – Cindy Sherman
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On the Instagram post shown above Cindy says to @bradjohns333 of these selfies
“I think of it as sketching for future pieces. Keeping the juices flowing, as it were.”
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Lastly, here’s a look at the real, undistorted and beautiful Cindy Sherman with her makeup artist:
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• Follow Cindy Sherman on Instagram
• The Art History Archive of Cindy Sherman
• Cindy Sherman retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art
• Cindy Sherman on Artsy
• Cindy Sherman Books