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viewers of her art 'are given no hint of what to think or feel.' ( 20)Sherman, p. 8) leaving her artwork frequently open to debate. Born in New Jersey and the youngest of five children, she spent her childhood as many other girls did, painting, playing 'dress up', and as many in her generation were she was absorbed with the new technology of television. This fascination of that new technology can be seen reflected throughout her career and her many artworks are based around the media of film. Sherman received her Bachelor's degree in Photography from the College of Art at the State College University of New York in Buffalo. And her first exhibition was of seventy Untitled Film Stills taken between 1977 and 1980. (20)Sherman, p. 193)

A lot of the criticism Sherman receives is due to her 'self-portraits', because she dresses up as characters in arranged photographs, often resulting in a difficulty of separating her image from the underlying content and themes addressed in her work. Yet in her work Untitled Film Stills # 66-77 she herself seems to address this issue directly. She appears without costumes, make-up, and wearing only a bathrobe, and in her next series Untitled Film Stills #79-89 she appears as the complete opposite. Heavily staged, she is wearing different costumes and make-up in an almost theatrical approach. In a comparison of these two exhibitions, she is stating to the viewer, this is I, this is who I am 'dressing up' as if a character. Almost trying to validate that her art is not a 'self-portrait'. ( 200 Sherman p.8-9)

Sherman has had many recurring themes in her work including the male gaze, female vulnerability, and gender identity, with many of her Untitled Film Stills addressing gender and stereotype issues. Often encouraging the viewer to examine their own perceptions of such, and it is in her Untitled Film Stills that she frequently analyzes gender identity, with 'lessons in femininity' often portrayed through 'cinema about the dominant culture's preferred values and behaviours.'( (22) Mauer, p. 94)Â Yet Sherman's work so often criticized for attacking 'male-gaze' and the voyeuristic fetish of female vulnerability. Amelia Jones states this directly in Signs, ' Cindy Sherman's self-portrait untitled film stills from around 1980, in their aggressive flirtation with simulation and lack, clearly play on the structure of the gaze and its capacity to fetishize (to freeze or project as object) what lies in its purview.'

A great many of Sherman's Untitled Film Stills demonstrate female weakness (bring in Mary Wollstonecraft ) with her technique of specific camera angles enhancing the 'male-gaze' she is able to produce within the viewer a combination of fear and eroticism.

Yet with the example image, 'Untitled Film Still #255a€3 (1992) she has received much criticism for the work being pornographic, unlike previous Untitled Film Stills Sherman is not physically part of the work, using mannequins instead. Mannequins and Barbie dolls that she positions and stages with unmistakably fake backgrounds.

It would be quite easy to assume that Sherman could have been influenced by the work of Helmut Newton (1920-2004) particularly in her work addressing the male gaze. Newton was a German born Australian photographer, his work often used mannequins to highlight the falseness of the fash本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。