Photographer Cindy Sherman created a series of self-portraits titled Untitled Film Stills. The stills consisted of 69 black-and-white photographs where Sherman posed in different roles and settings. The stills remain nameless in order to preserve their ambiguity. Each photograph is 8 1/2 by 11 inches, displayed in identical, simple black frames. Untitled Film Still #2 is of Sherman posing in a bathroom mirror wearing only a towel. The analyses will discuses what Sherman’s image says about image appeal and it’s affect on society’s reality. In order to understand how image effects reality one must understand the shift society has undergone in the last century. In chapter 5 of “Typographic America” media theorist Neil Postman describes how America…show more content… In ‘How to Face the Gaze” Silverman introduces the idea that at the same time a photo is actually taken it not only takes away control but confers reality upon what it captures (Silverman). So referencing Avner Segall and Sander Schmidt’s “Reading the News Paper as a Social Text” they explain that the newspaper is a social space that directs us in it. One could infer that Silverman is showing that image appeal creates a fragmented reality that passes as real. And in this reality society begins to mimic what it sees, therefore mimicking something that is non-authentic (Silverman). Silverman also introduces the idea that images effect societies because of its need to self verify. Self-verification is a concept discussed by Hegel, who says the reason we do the things we do, is we have virtues that must be met we must verify our actions (Class notes). So in regards to images and their appeal to society, people are not verified until they are photographed. Sherman’s photographs have been presented as art, so viewers have been told how to interpret what she has done. Images create filters that society is unaware of; it’s an unintentional way of viewing oneself. Because people have a need to self verify and ease their biases they adapt to the images that fit those biases. Society starts to pose as what they presume others want to see. To identify is to mimic. is the effect
