Research into photographers work

Cindy Sherman:

Cindy Sherman was born on 19th January 1954, all of photographs are with her in them as she is representing the role of women and the role of artists. Sherman began by studying painting until one day she had had enough and came to the conclusion that she could just use a camera and put her time into an idea. During her time studying photography she met Charles Clough and together they formed Hallwalls an independant artists space where people could show their work.

In 1967 Cindy decided to move to New York and this is where she began taking photographs of herself which were then know as Untitled Film Stills. In her photographs she is dressed in wigs, hats, dresses and clothes that a very much unlike her own playing the roles of characters.

People often mistake her photographs as self portraits, however they are not as she is not portraying an actual person, she is portraying different characters such as: the housewife, the prostitute, the woman in distress, the woman in tears, the dancer, the actress and the malleable. For a photograph to be seen as a self portrait the artist has to portray a specific, actual person.

In 1981 Sherman was aksed to do a centerfold for the magazine Artforum. Sherman submitted a series of images where she was in a pink robe which was rejected by the magazine's editor who said that the photos might be misunderstood.

Sherman then went on to change her style as it was seen to be the disasters and fairy tales series and for the first time in her career she did not photograph herself in her images. From 1985 - 1989 her images were seen as more ugly than her earlier work, often dressing to look scary and deformed. In 1992 Sherman captured a series of photographs which are reffered to as "Sex pictures" in which she used dolls and prosthetic body parts both male and female, these photographs are meant to shock. Sherman continued to work in this way and continued to experiment with the dolls in the place of herself in the photographs for a while.

Cristina Nunez:

Cristina Nunez was born in Spain in 1962 and has been taking self portraits since 1988 to form a self therapy, to explore her creative identity and to raise her self esteem. She believes that the best therapy is to convey difficult emotions into art. she is a self taught portrait photographer, her photographs have been used in magazines around the world.

She started her work on self portraits in 1988 after 5 years of heroin addiction, it was a need to express difficult emotions. She uses her own method: the self portrait experience to explore reltionships and personal identity. Cristina teaches her method to inspire others in Prisons, Mental Health Centres, Art Academies, Companies and Schools. Her main goal is social activism.

Altogether she has published 14 books, her latest book is called 'Someone to love' it is the first in a 2 part series where she talks about her childhood and addiction to heroin and her journey to becoming who she is today, the second part of the series is all about her method and how it helped her get through it all, her books are there to help others who are in the same situation as she once was and help them find themselves as she did.