Digital Photography Artists

It's not difficult to find a lot on Cindy Sherman (see http://www.cindysherman.com/). This week's coincidence was reading about mis-en-scene in my film studies unit: what elements (and how) within the frame that the director choses to control. Re-visiting her 'film stills', I know understand a little more about them. For instance, how carefully she lights each image, its colour design, the setting if any, its costume and makeup, the pose...all these guide assumptions we make and, thus, the story we construct as a viewer.

Whereas Sherman is all about the face, Tracey Moffatt, is about the setting (see http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/26/Tracey_Moffatt/ - First Jobs series). Her choices say to me: technicolour 1960s, function dictates form, setting is more important than person, cheerful optimism that technology will solve all ills.

Sophie Calle (see http://www.galerieperrotin.com/artiste-Sophie_Calle-18.html) for instance includes "portraits of young offenders used as targets during the training of police officers in the city of M" whose identity has been 'protected' simply by covering their eyes - perhaps identity is not merely int he whole face, but just the eyes! In another set she presents 'Iconic portraits mutilated during the civil war in Spain'; these are Christian statues constructed in a time when realism in art was of critical value to the Church. Perhaps the fighters recognised that cutting off the nose of a saint was as powerfully symbolic as cutting the nose off a fellow citizen? And in a third series, posed human and artifical figures are posed as they read a message addressed to themselves, "Take care of yourself": we read the figures as reading a message of care.