Homage to ‘A Play of Selves’

Last summer (2019) I attended a 2-day weekend photography course called “The Staged Photograph” focusing on the works of Cindy Sherman. The course started out with a lecture about the history of the staged photograph and performance in photography and was followed by san exhibition of Cindy Sherman’s early works which included a collage style animation, a selection from her series A Play of Selves and Film Stills. I had the opportunity to watch an interview in which she discusses her most recent series, her outlook on photography and the idea of the self. Since the course focused on both theory and practice, I also had the chance to make a print of my own narrative photographic composition.

I took three self-portraits, and arranged them on a single image by using Adobe Photoshop. Stills, the gallery offering the course, sends out a monthly newsletter and my final print will be on their “artist spotlight” section in October’s issue (2019), I was asked to provide a description of my work and research for this section. Even though it’s just a newsletter, seeing your work in any publication is a great feeling. My work is featured here on the Stills website.

The course was also very beneficial to me from a scholarly perspective because I got to speak to photographers about the intersections of theory and practice, and had detailed discussions about the meaning of Sherman’s self portraits and her most recent foray into Instagram selfie art. These discussions and the lecture put the selfie into perspective through the artist’s point of view.

by IG