Narrative Lesson

November 13 2012

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Still #21

                                                                         Untitled #96

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #92, 1981

 

Jamie and Kirstin taught their lesson on narrative. They showed a PowerPoint on Cindy Sherman and asked us questions like what do you see? and What do you think that piece of paper is? Who is this woman? I think the questions encouraged the class to make up their on stories (narrative) about the woman in these photos. One student started talking about how the women in the photograph looks like she could be on desperate housewives, the photo is so filled of drama. They talked about genre and asked the class what type of genre these photos would fit into.The class replied drama or mystery. The photo Untitled #92 was given to us in the form of a worksheet. There was one box above the photo and one box bellow. We were asked to draw a narrative depicting what had happened to this woman before and after. I think this exercise was a great way to get the class thinking about putting a story together in a sequential manner. Kirstin also showed a demo on camera angles and we were told to think about what angle we wanted to shoot our photos at. For this project we used digital cameras to take a picture that tells a story, we were also asked to think of a genre for our photo. We had the option to make props for our photo. To start we were given a page to draw out an idea for a photograph. At this moment I froze up. For some reason I just couldn't jump right into this project. I couldn't think of any ideas do I just drew a picture of me kneeling on the ground looking frightened at something. To think of it it looks very similar to Cindy Sherman's Untitled #92. For this project my idea was not very original, but I think a few things could have helped. When I was drawing I desperately wanted more boxes on the paper so I could mess around with a few ideas, this way I wouldn't be tied to just one. I think it would have been helpful to be given random words describing a subject or verb that our narratives must include. Even if it was just one word I feel like that alone would have helped me generate some ideas. We worked with a partner who took our picture but the two narratives did not correspond. I think the lesson would have been more engaging if we worked with our partners in concept as well as production. Overall great job Kirstin and Jamie.

Here are a couple of  Cindy Sherman self portraits I found appealing.

 

Quote from Artist

 

"Everyone thinks these are self-portraits but they aren't meant to be. I just use myself as a model because I know I can push myself to extremes, make each shot as ugly or goofy or silly as possible."

Cindy Sherman