HW#1: Cindy Sherman, Selfies, and Photography

Photography is used as a form of expression and the moments we capture in a photograph are an art form. As social media has increased in popularity so has posting photographs on these social media websites, specifically Instagram and Facebook. We enjoy posting photos on Instagram and Facebook to get likes and receive positive comments. Posts that get the likes and positive comments are aesthetically pleasing and are usually heavily edited with filters. Cindy Sherman posts selfies on Instagram that are quite the opposite of most people. Her selfies are heavily filtered and edited but not in the way most people would edit their photos. She makes her face look obscure, almost alien-like. In my opinion, she is using these selfies to show that the people we present ourselves as on social media are not our true selves. She has even stated that “ we are almost never the selves in our selfies — and that the most hazardous disguises are the forced smiles we now whiten with our index fingers.” We have taken the art of capturing a moment and have transformed it into a way to feed our narcissism. But photography is and always will be a form of expression and we are free to post the photos we want, whether they are heavily filtered to make ourselves look like aliens or selfies that have no filters where others can see our beautiful flaws.