Major Project Influences (10): Susan Burnstine

Susan Burnstine is an American photographer, now living in Los Angeles. Her distinctive style has been developed by using home-made cameras and lenses produced from a variety of materials, which invariably contain flaws resulting in peculiar effects, predominantly varying degrees of blurring but also magnification of certain areas of her images. Always shooting in monochrome, the effects of these lenses are to produce dream-like, often nightmarish, almost abstract images in which the subject matter can be ascertained, but is only partially resolved.

I first came across Burnstine’s work as the cover photo and sleeve images for The Guillemots’ CD album ‘Walk the River’, in which the title and feel of the album’s title track are (in my eyes, at least) superbly reflected in her photographs (Images 1 and 2).

Image 1: Susan Burnstine, "Walk the River", Album Cover

Image 2: Susan Burnstine, "Walk the River", Sleeve Image

These images have the appeal of creating a brooding atmosphere and at the time (2012) encouraged me to investigate the deliberate introduction of blurring effects into my own images, although I used ‘Photoshop’ rather than home-made lenses to achieve this. The project never got off the ground, but now I’m considering again the deliberate introduction of blurring and other ‘effects’ in order to try to generate more emotion in some of the images for my current project. Blurring also refers to the concept of memory, where memories become faded with time. I’ve already introduced blurring into one of the images that I’m working with (which I may or may not use) and I am also looking at deliberately blurring one or more of the constituents of some other image montages. Will it work for me? If it doesn’t I may not pursue the work any further, because then it will be unlikely to work for the viewers of my images.

Susan Burnstine has produced two photo books. The first, ‘Within Shadows’ (cover photo shown in Image 3), is very expensive and difficult to get hold of, being out of print. Burnstine states that this work was prompted by powerful, nightmarish dreams that afflicted her during childhood and later during adulthood, particularly after she had been traumatised by the premature death of her mother. 

Image 3: Susan Burnstine, Cover Photograph for "Within Shadows"

More recently I have obtained the second book, ‘Absence of Being’, which was prompted when the dreams returned, following the death of her father. She writes down the dreams when she wakes, then tries to represent them on film as a type of therapy. There are some particularly striking images in "Absence of Being", which consist mainly of urban landscapes. My favourite photograph, "Beyond the East River", is shown below (Image 4).

Image 4: Susan Burnstine, "Beyond the East River", from "Absence of Being"

Susan Burnstine's work deals with memory and loss in a unique manner. Her atmospheric images provoke an emotional response in the viewer and provide an example of how blurring can be used in a positive manner. Making images that produce an emotional response from the viewer is one of the key aims (and arguably the most important remaining aim) of my project and this work illustrates one way in which I could achieve this.

Progress Update 6 October 2016 and Reflections, with reference to the BBC 2 Documentary 'A World Without Downs Syndrome' (Sally Phillips), Aired on 5 October (9.00pm)

Well, I’ve just started the second and final year of the Photography 3: Advanced course and events have taken a turn for the worse. I had felt reasonably happy with my submission for the 4^th course assignment, having produced a very early draft ‘mock up’ of a photo book incorporating 33 images to accompany text on a ‘one image per double page spread’ basis. Roughly a quarter of these images were new, whilst the remainder had been modified, to a greater lesser extent, or replaced following comments from my tutor after Assignments 2 and 3. I had divided the book up into four chapters and accompanied each chapter heading with a new, very different looking square image (giving me a set of four). I was happy with these new images, each of which related to the content of the appropriate chapter. Full commentary on the submission, my reasons for making changes and the degree of flexibility that was retained was sent as part of the submission.

A few days later I spoke to my tutor on ‘Skype’ (and these discussions are invaluable for me – thanks to him for setting them up) and it was clear that there were problems. He discussed the images mostly in general terms, also picking out one or two specific examples, and listed ‘nine and a half’ as being presentable. Only one of the new images that I had produced was included in the list, so it appeared that my work during the summer months had been of little value. We didn’t discuss why images had been excluded by him nor, in most cases, whether there was anything salvageable from them. That will come later. In the mean time I am left to ponder what I can do with 9.5 images and a load of text that will turn this into a portfolio worthy of submission for assessment.

So why am I struggling with this project and what can I do about it? The first question is difficult to answer, but after some thought I have come up with two main reasons. The answer to the second question is, as Dylan put it, “blowing in the wind”.

Reasons for Struggling Part 1

I am attempting to present my photographic work in a radically different way, blending archival photographs from the time when my mother was alive with either other archival images or (in the vast majority of cases) with images taken by me specifically for the project. The goal was to produce a photo book dealing with my mother’s battle against depression in her later years and how it affected me. My tutor has been very helpful in giving me references to (photographic) artists who blend two or more current images together and also artists who have produced portfolios of work relating to their mothers, fathers and/or other family members or acquaintances who may have been suffering from disabilities. I have been active in finding many other references in these areas. However, I am unaware of any photographer who has combined a restricted number of not very good archival family photographs with current images to try to tell a moving family story. I can’t ask my mother to pose now (in January 2017 it will be ten years since she died), I can’t photograph inside her house (long since sold) or in the garden. I do have a handful of photographs of the bare rooms of the house following clearance (and I have used these in a couple of images). In other words I have very limited resources to put together my montages and this has led to some repetition, particularly in the portraits of my mother that I have used.

Reasons for Struggling Part 2

In the montages I have tried in some cases to depict images that reference events that are described in the accompanying text. Some of the results are, by my own admission, crude and/or naïve. Worse still – and here we have the crux of the problem – they may not add anything at all to the text. The text may promote empathy in the reader, whilst the images leave them cold. If this is the case I might end up having to remove a lot of the images from the book, leaving a lot of text with a handful of images – hardly assessment material for a project in photographic art.

Which of the various art forms moves me the most? Which stirs up the greatest emotions? I have to put music (certain types) at the top of the list, followed perhaps by the spoken word, films (which often have a music sound track) and the written word. Photography comes at the bottom of the list! Not only that, but I am discovering that it is easier for me to arouse empathy and emotion through the written word than through my photography (I’m not a musician, although I do occasionally write poetry). It is no wonder, then, that a lot of my montage images are failing to elicit a positive response.

This issue was brought home to me when I watched the documentary ‘A World without Downs Syndrome’, presented by Sally Phillips, a scriptwriter with an 11 year old child with Downs Syndrome. Phillips argued passionately for all mothers to have the right to choose whether to bring children with Downs Syndrome into the world, having been fully informed about the issues involved at the eight week stage now that recently developed non-invasive technology can be used with a high degree of certainty to detect Downs’ babies at that point. Furthermore, she stressed how sad and isolated people with Downs Syndrome would feel if all ‘Downs pregnancies’ were in future terminated. As part of the documentary she visited Iceland, where currently 100% of Downs pregnancies are (with parental approval) being terminated. She spoke with an Icelandic photographer who had produced a project portfolio of over 30 images of the very few Icelandic people having Downs Syndrome. I thought back to so many exhibitions that I have visited where people from minorities, migrants and people with disabilities have had their portraits taken, the portraits then being displayed in order to make political and/or socio-economic statements. Am I moved by these portraits? Very rarely. Does the accompanying text move me? More often. It is true that the images may ignite peoples’ interest in who these people are and common bond they have. However, the hard-hitting message is in the text or, in the case of Sally Phillips’ case, the spoken word and moving image. Even though I did not feel the desire to take sides in the debate I was moved by this programme in a way that would not have been possible if I had walked into a studio and seen 30+ photographs of Icelandic Downs’ Syndrome people.

What Way Forward?

So, I have identified what I feel are the key reasons for why my project may go ‘off the rails’. Basically, I have chosen a unique but extremely challenging photographic method of describing my mother’s battle with depression and its effect on me and the resultant images have not, in many cases, worked. In addition the prose that accompanies the images is likely to raise significantly more empathy in the viewer than many of images themselves – thus downgrading the images to more of a supporting role. In a photographic project the images should be at the forefront!

I will obviously need to discuss the way forward with my tutor. One possibility might be to remove some images entirely and replace others with montages that do not directly relate to events described in the accompanying text, perhaps focussing on more general issues relating to depression. This would require a lot more work and would mean throwing out much hard work and effort, but might be possible within the time constraints of the project. However, my tutor’s initial reaction to the new square ‘chapter heading’ images, which start to look at this area, was not encouraging.

I promised myself that I would produce a photo book as a personal memorial to my mother and that promise still stands, whether or not it is done within or outside the confines of this course. I am also determined to finish this course within the two years that I have to complete it, submit for assessment and earn a degree.  After that it will definitely be time to move on!

Major Project Influences (9) - Sophie Calle and Book Review: 'Double Game' (Violette Editions, 2007)

Sophie Calle is a French conceptual artist, producing works and installations of a personal and/or autobiographical nature and using photographs to document her art. Her works often take the form of rituals and frequently involve interactions with others on streets in cities, detective work, journeys and performance incorporating arbitrary rules, recorded in intimate detail and in a self-deprecatory manner. However her style is, as far as I am aware, unique and impossible to categorise. I first came across her art at the ‘Walk On’ exhibition in Birmingham a few years ago, where the text and photographs of ‘Suite Venitienne’ (see below) were pasted along approximately forty feet of wall space. Fascinated by her pseudo-detective story, I spent half an hour reading through it from start to finish. The book ‘Double Game’ contains ‘Suite Venitienne’, together with several others of her best known works. The book references American author Paul Auster’s 1992 novel ‘Leviathan’, in which a number of her earlier works are used by Auster in creating a fictional character called Maria. These works are all included in ‘Double Game’. Auster created some additional rules for Maria to follow and Calle used these rules to produce further conceptual works. Finally Calle went to New York and invited Auster to invent some new rules for her to follow, in performance, in the city. The resultant work of art, ‘Gotham City’, concludes the book.

Calle has borrowed one or two of the ideas from Auster’s book and introduced them into her own art, but the bulk of this book consists of the photographs and text from some of her best known art works, including ‘The Striptease’, ‘Suite Venitienne’, ‘The Detective’, ‘The Address Book’ and ‘The Birthday Ceremony’, which are all referenced in Auster’s work.

In ‘The Striptease’ Calle mentions how, at the age of six, she used to undress in an elevator on the way to the sixth floor of the block of flats where she lived with her grandparents and run naked along the corridor to their flat entrance. In 1979, twenty years later, she was performing striptease on the stage of a strip club, not far from her grandparents’ home. The performance was recorded for her on camera (early stage: Image 1).

Image 1 (Sophie Calle)

Why she chose to do this, even as a way of producing performance art, is not covered in the book (although Auster presents some possible causes in his own book, a section of which [relating to Maria] is incorporated into Calle’s book). However, Calle’s audacity at taking on this role, presumably mainly for the sake of art, characterises much of her work.

In ‘Suite Venitienne’ (1981) Calle acts out one of her favourite roles, playing the detective as she visits Venice to find and then follow a man whom she had met at an opening shortly beforehand. Having discovered where he is staying she follows and photographs him as he moves around the city (Image 2). What I find particularly interesting about this work is how the seemingly bland and uninspiring documentary photographs cleverly combine with the text to immerse the viewer in an atmospheric and intense adventure.

Image 2 (Sophie Calle)

In ‘The Birthday Ceremony’ (1980-1993) Calle decided that, every year on her birthday, she would invite the number of people corresponding to her age, including one complete stranger chosen by one of her guests, to dinner. She kept her presents from these occasions, showcasing and photographing them every year (Image 3). However, it appears that the ritual was frequently interrupted, due to her need to attend events elsewhere around the time of her birthday as her fame (notoriety?) grew. She eventually abandoned the ritual on her 40^th birthday.

Image 3: Birthday Presents 1985 (Sophie Calle)

The final section of the book deals with a project, entitled ‘Gotham Handbook’, in which Auster asked Calle to carry out “personal instructions for S C on how to improve life in New York City”. These included smiling at and talking to strangers, performing small acts of kindness towards beggars and homeless people and cultivating and beautifying a small spot on the streets of the city, imbuing it with her own identity. Calle’s interpretations of these instructions, which included taking over and decorating the right half of a double phone booth (Image 4), are described in some detail. The end of the project came shortly after the telephone company returned the booth to its original state.

Image 4 (Sophie Calle)

I really enjoyed reading this book. Sophie Calle stretches conceptual art to its limits (if, indeed, there are limits) in these works and yet makes her art very accessible. She is undoubtedly a ‘one off’, perhaps very difficult to understand or to relate to but also incredibly creative. I admire the bare-faced cheek and bravado of some of her works, which sometimes lead her into deep trouble. She writes well and her photographs, superficially bland, run together with the text describing her projects to create atmosphere and emotion, apparently without effort.

What can I take from this book to inform and enhance my own work? Perhaps the most important learning point is that the intelligent combination of text and a portfolio of photographs can be used to not only document an event but also to provoke interest and emotion in the viewer.

Progress Update 30 August 2016

Some progress on my major project has been made since the last update in June, despite a variety of interruptions for holidays, etc. I have looked through the 27 image ‘sketches’ that I submitted for Assignment 2. Five have been rejected and 21 have been revised, whilst one awaits a major revision. Revising the sketches has ranged from making one or two minor alterations to a complete overhaul of the sketch and has been based on tutor comments, as well as my own feelings about the subject matter and how it relates to the accompanying text. I have produced three new sketches and have plans to produce five more before I submit for Assignment 4 at the end of September. For consistency I have produced all the revised sketches in colour and each consists of a blend of two or more images, one or more being contemporary and one or more archival (from the time when my mother was alive).

Following feedback from my tutor and our discussion relating to the second and third assignments I have decided to concentrate on producing a photo book as the major output from my project work, although I still intend to produce prints, as well as a multimedia or video presentation, for assessment. My thoughts about what style and format to use for the book varies from week to week, but my current plans are as follows:

• ·    The book will probably contain 40-50 images, including (doubtless following further revisions and replacements) the 30 or so that I will have produced as sketches by the end of September.
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• ·         All the images will accompany a page of text, although there will be more images than pages of text.
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• ·         I will split the book up into four or five ‘chapters’.
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• ·    I am considering dealing with the subject of clinical depression as a separate chapter, and producing a set of images to accompany the text. This is problematical, as I have never knowingly suffered from clinical depression, but I would like to give this a try. I already have ideas for a number of image sketches, which would likely be a blend of two or more contemporary images.
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• ·       I intend to format the book with text on the left hand page, followed by an odd number (1, 3, 5…) of images, each occupying a separate page. I am going to have to re-order some passages of text and images in order to place them in the relevant chapter and will also write some new text to accompany the new images. I will do this before submission for Assignment 4 and will produce a ‘mock-up’ book, with text accompanying images, for the assignment. This book will be incomplete, with more text and images to be added later. If the format doesn’t look right it should be easy to change, say to a ‘single chapter’ book, with text accompanying each image, or to a totally different format. The book is sure to evolve as the project reaches its final stages and my tutor has even suggested that I could split it into more than one book, although I think that I will need many more images than planned for this to be a sensible option.

Project-related research continues apace and I have studied in some detail the work of Cindy Sherman, Jim Mortram and Adrian Clarke since the last update in June (see this blog for further details). Adrian Clarke’s book ‘Gary’s Friends’ was particularly relevant, both in terms of linking images with text to produce an emotional response and in terms of formatting a photo book with accompanying text. I’m looking at the work of Sophie Calle at present and have lots of other artists (many suggested by my tutor!) still to investigate.

Major Project Influences (8) - Adrian Clarke and Book Review: 'Gary's Friends' (West Pier Press, 2007)

My tutor recommended that I look at ‘Gary’s Friends’, both because of the relevance of the subject matter and because as a photo book it might give me some ideas about how to construct a book about my relationship with my mother.

Adrian Clarke gave up his career as a lawyer, specialising in cases of miscarriage of justice, in order to become a professional photographer. However, he retained his interest in human interaction, swapping clients for sitters. ‘Gary’s Friends’ is a collection of portraits of people affected by violence, alcoholism and drug addiction in former mining villages in County Durham and in Middlesborough. Each of the 40 portraits is accompanied by an account from the sitter of how they had lived their lives. In addition, Clarke includes some ‘gritty’ urban and rural landscape photographs of the area in which the sitters lived.

The book, which was published nearly ten years ago, has met with critical acclaim from a number of sources, both as a photo book and as a social statement.

Review

Children of broken marriages, violent and/or alcoholic parents, juvenile delinquency, early exposure to drugs, gangs, alcoholism, prostitution, violence and heroin addiction are themes in a bleak picture of shattered lives, surrounded by an industrial wasteland following the closure of local mines. Clarke paints a bleak picture of his subjects, all of whom are connected, in some cases tenuously, to Gary Crooks, ex-drug addict, drug dealer, gangster and armed robber. Each portrait is placed opposite autobiographical text, succinctly paraphrased by the photographer.

When I first opened the book I started reading the text before looking at the portraits, but I soon switched to first observing the portraits and then trying to second guess the story of the subjects before reading the text. It seems that other readers of this book may have used a similar technique – in his introduction, Alexander Masters memorably suggests that Kay (Image 1) “might be a holiday operator testing a hotel bed in Tenerife, but is actually an alcoholic sitting in her rehab room”. It soon became clear that there were few winners in these stories, although many talk about making new beginnings.

Image 1; Kay Moore (Adrian Clarke)

Amidst all the personal carnage there are stories of minor heroism, in particular from the mothers, such as Christine Crooks (Gary’s aunt), who never abandoned her son Philip (see Image 2) despite his continuing heroin addiction.

Image 2; Christine and Philip Crooks (Adrian Clarke)

Image 2 is a great example of how Clarke brings out the character of his subjects very well in the family images, where the subjects can and do interact. When the sitters are alone it becomes harder to predict how their lives have turned out. Nearly all the portraits were taken indoors, either in the sitters’ homes or in institutions, using natural light. Sometimes they are cropped tight but on other occasions their surroundings (usually in a sitting room) give the viewer the chance to get a feel for their immediate environment. It was only when I looked through the portrait photographs again, ignoring the text, that I realised how much of the sitters’ characters were revealed in the photographs.

The landscape photographs further add to the bleak picture created by the text. Cemeteries, dead end streets, motorways and urban and rural decay all feature, with the image of a man walking his dog past a derelict garage (Image 3) being typical.

Image 3 (Adrian Clarke)

Those of us who read this book are likely to be in far better shape than the subjects that he describes. This should not allow us to be critical of them. What would have happened to me if I had been born in one of these villages, perhaps to a single mother who could only make her living out on the streets? Perhaps I might have been born a heroin addict (an example is described in the book). Only the strong and/or lucky can make good having been brought up in an environment such as this and how strong you are as a person is dictated, to some extent, by your genes – it’s a vicious circle, in which the easy solution appears to be to turn to crime and/or to take to drink or the needle. Clarke delineates a major social problem that is not limited to the communities that he so eloquently describes, but he does not offer a solution.

Photo Book Organisation

Following some introductory images and the written introduction by Alexander Masters, Adrian Clarke’s book sticks to a rigid format. Text is placed on the left hand page and portrait images are opposite the text on the right hand page. If, as it often does, the text goes onto a second page, it is accompanied by a non-portrait image opposite. I am planning to also place passages of text on the left hand page, but to follow each passage of text by an odd number (1,3,5) of images, to be placed starting on the right hand page but then alternating between right and left until the final image is placed on the right hand page. A new piece of text will then be placed on the next (left hand) page unless a new chapter is to be started (my current intention is to split my photo book into four or five sections, although this may change in the future). Clarke’s is the first photo book that I have found where there is a substantial amount of accompanying text and where the formatting has some similarity to the way I would like to format my own photo book.

Final Comments and Learning Points

Adrian Clarke’s text and images speak eloquently of a broken or crumbling community at a certain time, where lives had been and were being ruined by social deprivation, shortages of jobs, boredom and social decay. As such, this work carries a powerful punch. Will it change (or has it changed) society? This is doubtful, because it is likely only to be read by the ‘converted’. We are also, of course, looking at an unrepresentative cross-section of the community. Surely not everybody in the area was taking drugs, was an alcoholic or a prostitute. Some people would have tried to break out of this apparently dead end existence and doubtless some will have succeeded. New housing estates (mentioned in the book) will have brought comparatively well off commuters into the area: new supermarkets to serve them and industrial estates to replace the rubble will have brought jobs. The community will be changing, hopefully for the better.

The use of a combination of text and images here produces powerful and at times emotional messages. This is exactly what I am trying to do in my own project, so Adrian Clarke’s book represents an excellent lead for me to follow. Likewise, the construction of the photo book provides a useful template for me to investigate.

Major Project Influences (7): Jim Mortram.

Jim Mortram is a carer for his mother, who suffers from chronic epilepsy. His upbringing and his role as a carer based, as he says, “on the fringes of society”, has required patience, empathy and understanding. He has used these qualities within his community in East Anglia to gain the trust of and to establish relationships with a number of people who might be regarded as social outcasts and to document their lives, both through the medium of photography and through the use of the written word. Unlike so many people he is obviously a great listener and allows his subjects, who would otherwise be unable to speak for themselves, to tell their ongoing life stories in their own words. The results take the form of detailed picture stories which are published on his web site (http://smalltowninertia.co.uk/).

My tutor alerted me to Mortram’s work because he rightly thought that it was very relevant to my own project work and to my relationship with my mother. There is a stark contrast between Mortram’s acute social awareness, patience and understanding of his subjects and my own lack of understanding as a former long distance, (very) part time carer. However, his description of his subjects and their alienation from society does remind me of the struggle that my mother faced in her later years, although I concede and hope that she was offered and received far more help from family and social services than Mortram’s subjects get – although they do not have to cope with clinical depression. Mum was never allowed to slip off the edge of society, whereas many others do: these are the people whose lives Mortram chronicles.

How relevant to my work is Mortram’s photography? Technically, his output is variable although he probably had to contend with some difficult lighting conditions for the many indoor shots. Some of his best work is very atmospheric (see image 1 below), but what is most impressive is the way that his photographic portraits evoke emotion and empathy as they bring his characters to life. It is far too late for me to portray my mother in her final years, but if I had chosen to do so when she was alive I would have learnt much from Mortram’s work.

What really stands out in ‘Small Town Inertia’ is the combination of the images, Mortram’s own succinct commentary on the status of his subjects and the somewhat lengthier, but fascinating utterances of the subjects. I was particularly moved and impressed by his account of the life of a gentleman called David.

David

Image 1: David (Jim Mortram)

David was blinded in adult life as the result of a freak accident. He lived with his mother, Eugene, whose health was deteriorating when Mortram got to know David. Eugene passed away and David was left to cope for himself, without friends or family. Mortram was at the hospital with David when he said goodbye to his mother for the last time (Image 1) and documented David’s life in the months that followed her death (Images 2 and 3). The account, often given in David’s own words, brought tears to my eyes. Unfortunately there are many other Davids living all over the country, to whom life has given a very poor deal, who are totally forgotten and don’t have a chance to communicate with society. Jim Mortram’s work reminds us of this and pricks at our consciences: could we do more as individuals or as part of society to avoid letting the Davids of this world ‘slip through the net’?

Image 2: David says goodbye to his mother for the last time (Jim Mortram)

Image 3: David (Jim Mortram)

Here is David speaking in a profound manner about the unjustness of the way he is sometimes treated:

“When I was a boy, I had some chickens and sometimes you’ll get some and they’ll start pecking at one bird, and it seems like once one gets a bit of blood, a feather or two gone from a hen and they get to the blood of the bird, they all jump in, pecking at it, attacking this one hen and the only way to stop them was by putting some tar on the hens feathers and then when this gang of birds would attack, then they would get this tar in their beaks and not be able to spit it out, and they don’t like the taste, so they stop.”

“That blood lust, that mentality, seems to me to be the way people can be. I think of that a lot, especially when I get trouble in town, we are like chickens in a run and when one has a go the rest join in, jumping on the same one. It’s exactly the same thing, isn’t it, except instead of birds doing it to one, it’s people doing it. We really are no different. We are no better, are we?”

“The thing is, you can stop the birds doing it, but people, I don’t know if there is a way to stop people behaving in this way. You’d think the deterrent would be guilt and shame, for acting in such a fashion, but no, people don’t seem to have those feelings any more, they just do as they want, well, some people have feelings of guilt but, they are never the ones that have a go or become a bully.”

“That’s how I honestly feel about it. When the poor blame the poor, it’s the gang of chickens, singling out the weak ones, and trying to peck them to death, when they should all be against the farmer, for it’s he that’ll be cutting their heads off.”

Final Thoughts

Jim Mortram is rightly critical of the lack of government funding and support for people on the edge of society, such as Tilney1, another of his subjects who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. These picture stories are powerful and moving accounts of lives lived on the fringes of or outside society, which are now receiving a wide audience through Mortram’s efforts (although it should be much wider than it is). Some of the work has been published in book form (by Café Royal Books) although I have, as yet, been unable to get my hands on any of them. Nevertheless the web site gives an excellent, detailed account of his current work, which will be a valuable source of ideas for my own work.

Research, Book Review and Major Project Influences (6): 'The Complete Untitled Film Stills' (Cindy Sherman), Museum of Modern Art, 2003

Generally regarded as being one of the most important and influential achievements of postmodernist, conceptual and photographic art, the 69 self-portraits from Cindy Sherman’s three year (1977-80) project, “The Untitled Film Stills”, are brought together in this book, produced by the Museum of Modern Art (New York), which owns the images. In this series of self-portraits Sherman delights in dressing up and acting out female roles inspired by the movie culture, mass media and advertising. Her black and white images explore the themes of contemporary culture, voyeurism, sexual desire and feminism at the time whilst simultaneously looking at the Hollywood society and exploitative advertising. A handful of Sherman’s images have become extremely well-known, but I had never seen most of the series before I read this book. In an introductory essay Sherman explains how the series came into being and how it developed, as well as commenting upon some of the individual photographs. She also arranged the sequence of pictures in the book.

Many pages have been filled with detailed interpretations of Sherman’s work, so it was refreshing to read her matter of fact introductory essay, about her interest in performance art, how she originally planned a series of stills about the same young actress’s career and then expanded her roles to include older women. She actually played male roles as well, although none of the resultant photographs were included in the series (“I guess I wasn’t in touch with my masculine side”). Interestingly, she struggled to think of more than a handful of male stereotypes whereas she could find so many female stereotypes.

The images themselves vary, both in technical quality (some of the images are blurred or [accidentally] out of focus) and in complexity. On the one hand there is a simple photograph of Sherman, wearing a snorkelling mask, face only above the water in a swimming pool (#46, taken by her niece, so not a self-portrait), which resists any kind of interpretation. On the other hand, #14 (Image 1) features a sophisticated set-up, employing a mirror, which hints that Sherman is not alone in the room where the self-portrait has been taken. This image compares well with the complexity of some of the tableaux produced at around the same time by Jeff Wall.

Image 1. Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #14 (1978)

Some of Sherman’s images (deliberately) provoke emotion. Untitled Film Still #48 (Image 2, one of her best known photographs) shows a young actress complete with suitcase by the side of the road, waiting to hitch a lift. Her vulnerability is clear for all to see. In another image (#27) Sherman is seen sitting at a table, apparently “all cried out”. Sherman’s undoubted sex appeal, particularly in the early images, will also have had an impact on the (predominantly) male voyeur (the “male gaze”).

Image 2. Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #48 (1979)

I was particularly interested in the tableau shown in #33 (Image 3). Sherman sits on the edge of a bed, staring at an opened letter and envelope which is also on the bed, nearer to the camera. In the background a portrait of a man (actually Sherman herself, role playing again!) can be seen in the frame.  Unfortunately this is another photograph that has not reproduced well in the book – Sherman explains some of the reasons for the reproduction problems in her essay. The picture tells a story, although we do not know what the story is. Perhaps this image is closest to the type of work that I am trying to produce for my own project, which will incorporate several self-portraits, with accompanying text, that try to convey various types of emotion.

Image 3. Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #33 (1979)

In her essay Sherman explains how she was helped by friends and relatives during her three year quest, how she investigated using colour for the series and how the finished series ‘took off’. She tells little stories about individual images (for example the shadowy figure at the top of the flight of stairs in #65 (Image 4), which adds enormously to the atmosphere of the photograph, was a complete stranger who just happened to be coming down the steps at the moment the shutter was triggered). I was impressed by the straightforward, unpretentious style with which Sherman describes her work, which is in direct contrast to the way in which the work of her contemporaries (Jeff Wall springs to mind) is described and discussed. She even comments that she is “a little sick of these pictures”! Maybe her project was a perfect fit for the time and place, but there is no doubt that the simple but profound concept of “Untitled Film Stills” and Sherman’s determination to keep working on the project for three years, as it changed shape and became more complex, has produced one of the most important works of conceptual photographic art.

Image 4. Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #65, 1980

Whilst the technical quality of some of the photographs has not stood the test of time well, the originality of the concept and the quality of the ideas behind many of the individual photographs certainly has. This work has been very influential within the art world and has helped to establish photographic art as an important medium. My own project work has already been influenced by studying reproductions of her best known work. Perhaps the success of the series comes from the fact that it will appeal, for diverse reasons, to a wide cross section of people, including those who have little or no understanding of the meaning of conceptual photographic art. In the era of the ‘selfie’, these photographs stand up proudly as a series and they will continue to do so for many years to come.