Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/02/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I have been watching Cindy Sherman's work right from the beginning. I have found it to be a fascinating journey from her early days, where American Photographer picked her as a someone to watch, to the present "exalted" position in the art photo world. She got there by pursuing her own vision not jumping on all the flavour of the month bandwagons. As with any mature work, one sometimes feels a little lost jumping in at the end or the middle. If you can find at your library a retrospective of her work, I think that you might appreciate her more. Anytime I find a work particularly dense, I remember how impressionism was received and give it a little time before making any pronouncements. When I say my first Helmut Newton my first reaction was revulsion at what I felt to be strong degrading S&M overtones, again it took time and exposure to a range of his work to begin to appreciate him. I now find his work to be about power and surprisingly, considering the time in which it was done, that power is given to his women muses. I do not find them sexual at all now. American Photo just ran a retrospective on him and I would highly recommend getting a copy. In Nan Goldin's defence it is very difficult to maintain the lifestyle necessary for her early work and she has had to reinvent herself. So far I have found her search very interesting and her use of colour breathtaking. By the way she uses Leica Ms now, not that it makes any difference. Larry Clarke's early work reminds me a lot of Nan's early work and, though the journey must have been horrible for him, I like the stuff he is doing now as well. He used Ms but now I believe is mostly exhibiting stills from his films. John Collier I hope your new lens works out well. > From: John Brownlow <deadman@jukebox.demon.co.uk> > Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 12:01:16 +0000 > Subject: Re: [Leica] Re: Emperor's new clothes... > > > Cindy Sherman. > > > > Oh God, I hate her stuff so bad. > > > > And, hate is too strong a word, but while I enjoyed THE BALLAD OF SEXUAL > DEPENDENCY, Nan Goldin's work appears to have degenerated into a bunch of > self-generating cliches from the hinterlands of various tedious subcultures > that we're meant to find 'interesting' per se. Not me. > > And let's not get me started on Helmut Newton, per-lease. >