Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXKNuWtXZ_U
On the whole I found Cindy Sherman's documentary very informative and though-provoking. I found that a large part of the recurring themes shown in this documentary were somewhat familiar because of the lecture on postmodernism from our last class.
The first thing that stood out for me from the piece was when Sherman was describing her process and motivations for some of her photographs, she stated that, "through a photograph you can make people believe anything...(essentially I'm) figuring out ways to tell lies in a way"(1994, Sherman). I think that this is a really powerful statement to make, one that co-insides with a message I took from our last lecture on modernism and postmodernism. From what I gather, modernist photographers attempted to tell 'the truth' in their images by photographing things 'objectively' just as they really were. Whereas postmodernists like Sherman have more of a subjective sorry to tell, one that is perhaps sometimes subversive in the sense that she revealed things in her images not currently shown in mainstream media.
Throughout the documentary Sherman mentioned producing work that falls outside of the 'normal' realms of artwork, she also touched on showcasing things that are not typically seen or though of by people, not in an attempt to sell art pieces and paintings but to merely provoke thoughts in minds of people. For instance her "outrageous portraits of genitalia from angles that most people will never see them from" (1994, Curtis), or even her carefully crafted images of vomit or condoms, which I personally feel links back to Sherman's early point regarding the portrayal of things usually only found in our imagination.
