Neumeier 1 Sam Neumeier Professor Mamary Intro to Liberal Arts 17 October 2016 Jeannette’s Identity Could the dysfunction of the Walls family have promoted the amazing resilience and strength of Jeannette through various daily challenges? It is easy to see that Rex and Rose Mary did not provide a safe and nurturing environment for Jeannette and her siblings. This forced her into a few unique situations, which resulted in her having to fight for herself, and become her own hero. This helps Jeannette generate an identity for herself. As she learned new social and survival skills in the hopeless town of Welch, Virginia.
Polizer Prize-winning journalist, Donald M. Murray, in his essay for The Boston Globe, “The Stranger in the Photo Is Me”, argues that innocence changes overtime through photos. He supports this claim by first alluding to an artist’s painting. Then he speaks on himself in third-person, and finally reflect on the loss of innocence. Murray’s purpose is to describe his experiences in order to inform people. He adopts a nostalgic tone for people over the age of sixty.
It is hard to define identity in the sense of human characteristics and qualities of one’s self or even a group of people. However, every day people manage to define their identity through various outlets of life. In the documentary, Through a Lens Darkly, the director, Thomas Allen Harris, asks artists who are African Americans to define themselves and their culture through photography. He uses his own identity in demonstrating the effect of photography on his own life as an African American. Through the rest of the documentary, Harris explores the identities of African Americans through photography publicly and privately in past and present.
Throughout history, photographs have been known to depict and represent culture, character, information, and ideology. Through specific elements of form, and close scrutiny, photographs give a representation of the “bigger picture” by providing content and invaluable information that text, on its own, does not produce. Dr. Carol Payne, a professor of art history at Carleton University, wrote an essay in 2012 for the Oxford University Press. This essay focused on the relationships between photographic images, Canadian culture and identity, and indigenous people. Her thesis was to discuss how an image can present a sense of national identity (Carol Payne 310).
There is also a wedding ring on her perfectly manicured hand. These are all attributes of a 1950’s housewife as they had a sexualised identity. She does not have her gaze diverted to the camera, but instead, her eyes are unable to be seen. In addition to that, she is laying down in a passive pose to suggest her lack of power and dominance. It is shot from a high angle so the camera looks down on the subject, making the subject, which in this case is the woman, seem insignificant and
No matter one’s career choice, family life, ethnicity, or culture, finding and owning one’s personal identity is a persistent struggle that can last an entire lifetime. One is surrounded by media and messages feigning “the perfect life” which begin to consume one’s thoughts with “what if’s” or “if only’s”. Lucy Grealy struggles with defining her self-image in her autobiography, Autobiography of a Face. Throughout Grealy’s accounts of her battle with cancer, bullies, and her self-esteem, readers get a raw, painful, yet incredibly relatable look into the elements that can contribute to self-image. In writing Autobiography of a Face, Grealy leaves readers with a chilling lesson: only readers themselves, not peers or the media or society, can choose how to define their lives.
That said, Sia’s use of “gray-face” paint in her new video for “The Greatest” as a way to unify the identities of all the young dancers, who vary in race and gender, could be seen, arguably, as a means of reconstituting the use of face painting in a modern era. As opposed to creating caricatures, this video creates a reality which we must
In society, there are several stereotypes and gender roles culturally influenced by women today. Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills series made between (1977-1980) shows different stereotypes of women in different everyday situations. This series consists of the artist posing as those female roles in seventy black and white photographs. In my opinion, by doing this series she challenges the way we view women regularly in pictures, by giving a different perspective. In this paper, I examine Cindy Sherman’s work and how my work is inspired by or relates to her work.
Nuanced narratives of race, identity, and representation may be explored via the lens of the junction of art and society debate. The objective of this study is to explore the diverse field of African American visual art and examine its function as a medium for expressing and navigating intricate socio-cultural matters. This research aims to shed light on how African American artists negotiate and subvert dominant narratives. It centers on the question, "How do African American artists use visual art as a medium for expressing issues of race, identity, and representation in society?" By means of an extensive examination of a variety of artworks and artists, this study aims to reveal the methods by which these producers interact with the complexities
Subject: A series of black and white photographs, Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills look similar to snapshots from 1950 B-Grade Hollywood Films. Untitled Film Still #48 seems to have spurned from a film set in the country, as indicated by the plaid skirt Sherman is wearing. Standing beneath an overcast sky, her hands behind her back, she looks vulnerable and defenceless. The dark shapes of the trees and the shadows over the road and in the background stand erect, dominating her.
It also contains a decapitated woman dressed in a bathing suit who is sitting in the center of the piece with a light bulb replaced as her head. On top of the light bulb is what seems to be a cut out of a female hairstyle. It is also made upon a tan colored background giving the photomontage an antique look. Furthermore, the piece also contains a boxer that appears to be emerging from the tire. This combination of cut outs gives the impression that women were progressing slowly and that society was industrializing as well.
Blondeau’s piece is a parody magazine cover, featuring Blondeau posed in an iconic white pin-up girl aesthetic; a satirical Cosmopolitan cover page model. And in contrast to this item, Mi’kwite’tmn by Johnson is a combination of three different exhibition components; resulting in an interactive setting. A section of Mi’kwite’tmn consists of a responsive Archive Room, holding O’pltek, including a workstation to scan these forms and view these object’s digital records. Johnson uses the “hands-on” approach to include the viewers in the space, thus confronting the audience of their own understandings of what objects do or do not have cultural value, and whom has decided which objects have contemporary cultural value or are considered artifacts. Blondeau’s piece lacks a hands-on experience, but still confronts viewers to examine prejudices by confronting the viewer.
Throughout history, art has been used to explore the identity of individuals and of society. Two artists who encapsulate both society and their own identities through their works are, Frida Kahlo and Cindy Sherman. Frida Kahlo (1907- 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her "surrealist" self-portraits. Kahlo's paintings "The Two Frida's" and "Self-portrait with cropped hair" embody Kahlo's personal struggles with her identity throughout her life. Contrastingly, Cindy Sherman (1954- ) is an American photographer and film director knows most famously for her controversial portraits.
A set of characteristics by which something is familiar is an identity. People are able to recognize a chair by its flat surface and the legs that support it, however, humans adapt to this identity. For instance, there may be only one leg, but that does not stop it from being identified as a chair. When talking about humans the basic idea of identity tends to become perplexing. This does not stop oneself from identifying various people.
Instead of being divided by geography or chronologically, the show was divided into 4 sections: Life Cycles, Identities, Politics, and Emotions. This division allows for juxtaposition for a wide range of artists that their modes of practice and sociocultural, racial, economic, and personal situations might be radically different from their own. This type of relational analysis, which places diverse, transnational works by women in dialogic relation with careful attention to co-implicated histories, seeks to produce new insights into feminist art today. The article then goes on to explain the curatorial strategy of relational analysis and how it relates to Global
