Cindy Sherman: Imaging Art, Imaging Fashion
By Cayre English
Ever since Andy Warhol revealed the beauty of a can of Campbell’s soup, images of merchandise have adorned the walls of the world’s finest museums. One commodity that has been noticeably absent, however, is haute couture. For years fashion photography was considered too commercial to be taken seriously, an oversight remedied in April when the Queens branch of the Museum of Modern Art opened its first-ever exhibit of the sub-genre. The new show, entitled "Fashioning Fiction in Photography Since 1990", showcases the work of thirteen photographers, and prominently features Cindy Sherman’s large, hauntingly grotesque commercial works.
Sherman has not just been a critic of the fashion industry; she has long been an active participant. She has produced fashion spreads for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Interview, and has created advertising campaigns for Doroth�e Bis (1984) and Comme des Gar�ons (1994). Beginning in 1983, Sherman turned to exploring the construction of the image in the fashion industry in her series titled Fashion. This collection allowed Sherman to continue her signature exploration of voyeurism, femininity and costume begun in the late 1970s, but in addition to wigs and makeup she also added haute couture to her mode of disguise. Her iconographic work, regaled by feminists, art historians and culture theorists alike, now drew in the eye of a new viewer.
With its critical construction of image, fashion photography visibly shaped Sherman’s career; however, as the MoMA Queens show unveils, Sherman’s career has in turn shaped fashion photography. Today we are accustomed to fashion photographs that emphasize the emotion of the model and attempt to tell a continuing story in a single frame. A case in point is Omega’s current ads, which show Anna Kournikova slipping on her shoes while staring intently at something–or someone–outside the frame.
In fact, Sherman’s signifying "film still" type of image is so prevalent that it is easy to forget how recent a phenomenon it really is. In the 1950s Vogue photographer Irving Penn’s typical photo spread showed elegant models posing unnaturally and staring haughtily into the camera. In the 1970s and ‘80s Richard Avedon showed an interest in emotion, but he photographed models in an empty studio looking directly into the camera. Breaking into this tradition, Sherman’s photographs created a revolution in fashion photography and provided the inspiration for some of the other works on display in the show. An Ellen von Unwerth photograph from Alberta Ferretti’s Fall/Winter 1995 promotion depicts a Jackie O look-alike striking purposefully away from a house bearing the intriguing number 999. An image from Glen Luchford’s 1997 Prada campaign shows a woman wandering through a foggy, snow-covered garden at night, in what could be a scene from a film noir. As one wanders through the exhibition, one cannot help but draw the lines of reference back to Sherman as the originator of this visual vocabulary. As such, this exhibition is an important step in promoting recognition for Sherman’s influence on fashion photography.
