I am going to compare and critique the work of Annie Leibovitz and Cindy Sherman.

Both these women are photographers and use relatively modern subjects.

Cindy Sherman was born on 19th January 1954, in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. She is a Photographer and emerged onto the New York art scene in the early 1980s. “Working with what some critics have labeled the “self-portrait of performance,” Cindy Sherman nevertheless insists that her works – from movie stills to modern portraits – are not self-portraits, although they all feature her as the main character. Instead, the photographs are studies of many

 “different” women, broadly drawn and bordering on caricature, but still possessing the delicate details that identify them as familiar types. Made famous by her series Untitled Movie Stills (1977-80)” http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/sherman_cindy.php.

The Untitled movie stills series was of black-and-white photographs in which the artist depicted herself dressed in the disguises of clichéd B-movie heroines.

“In the Untitled 2000 series Sherman depicts women posing for the camera, appearing at once vulnerable and flamboyant she achieves these images after hours spent changing her costume (including prosthetics at times), hair, eyebrows, makeup, and lip shape. Only her green eyes remain constant from photograph to photograph, which are closely cropped revealing a body that is staged to the camera and bathed in a clear light.” http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/sherman_cindy.php

Sherman dispensed with representations of the female because the feminist found it distasteful. She removing herself from the picture and moving toward more fantastic and striking imagery, as in her ‘Fairy Tales’ and ‘Disasters’ series from the mid-to-late 1980s.

She makes the claim, “I like making images that from a distance seem kind of seductive, colorful, luscious and engaging, and then you realize what you’re looking at is something totally opposite. It seems boring to me to pursue the typical idea of beauty, because that is the easiest and the most obvious way to see the world. It’s more challenging to look at the other side.” I like how she has explained her subject and how she has gone about it in her photographs, such as the ‘Untitled 2000’ series.

Annie Leibowitz was born in Waterbury, Connecticut on 2^nd October 1949. She is an American Portrait photographer who works closely with her subject. She has photographed musicians, actors, and writers since the early 1970s. She is known for her portraits taken for the rolling stones magazine of rock stars, and in later years for Vanity Fair and vogue. She did a campaign for American Express credit cards in the 1980s and is known as a ‘photographer of celebrities’.

Her trademark technique involves the use of bold colours and surprising poses with intense lighting, as does Cindy Sherman in her ‘Clowns’ series.

Leibovitz has highlighted some aspect of each subject's public persona, for example a nude john Lennon hugging a clothed Yoko Ono, a nude Demi Moore with a suit painted on her body and Whoopi Goldberg lying in a bath full of milk. Whereas Sherman has highlighted her own public persona by portraying herself as different characters. Leibovitz photographs appear natural but like Shermans they are artificially posed.

I like the way Cindy Sherman categorizes her work. My favourite series is the ‘Untitled Movie Stills’ because I think that black and white photographs portray a classical image.

There are two particular series that do not appeal to me, these are ‘The Sex Pictures’ and ‘The Clowns’.  ‘The Sex Pictures’ which is one of her most recent works, I consider to be obscene and degrading to women.  I think from a modern female perspective that the use of these images of the female form conveys women in a negative light. ‘The Clowns’ series that I find unsettling, the reason for this is because of the gaudy face paint of the clowns, the staring dull eyes.

My favourite Leibovitz’s series is the  ‘Disney Dream Portrait Series” this is because I like the way the Disney characters are portrayed by celebrities. The scenes are instantly recognisable and the bright and vivid lighting is eye-catching. Her other works for Rolling Stones Magazine, Vanity Fair and Vogue show celebrities relaxed and at ease in her photographs in a positive light. I can not say that there is a particular photograph that I do not like of Leibovitz because they all have an underlining story, especially her latest work ‘women’.

I am glad I chose these two photographers as they both share strong ideologies of women, yet in different lights. Sherman is the subject of all of her work and in her ‘Untitled Movie Stills’ for example, classes women in a stereotypical role. Whereas Leibovitz’s series ‘Women’, uses the basis of strong and successful women as her focus point. Out of both artists, I have to say I was more intrigued by the works of Annie Leibovitz. This is due to her subjects and the situations she photographs them in.