Nasreen Islam: HW#1 Photography, Selfies, Cindy Sherman

Selfies are a way of documenting our lifestyle. We use selfies to show our emotions, our creativity, and our skills. The use of photography in social media has a great impact on everyone since they get to share their emotions and their lives with others. It’s a platform through which other people can be included in one’s life. In the photographs of Cindy Sherman, she revealed an ultimate truth that everyone knows but do not wish to acknowledge, which is deception. She claimed that the photographs on social media are all examples of deception since people often use beautifying alterations before posting a picture on their social media account. “Now Ms. Sherman has reaffirmed online 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.” This statement presented in the article confirmed that there is numerous filtration which occurs before a person post a picture on their social media account which alters the true image of themselves. Through her pictures, Ms. Sherman has shown the world that even when photographs are a form of documentation but there is deception taking place to create them which would exclude them from being a true form of documentation of a person’s life.