PHOTOGRAPHY

FACE THE HORROR, THEN CHANGE

a hard look at Cindy Sherman's "Disaster" series

By Kaitlin Hooper

©Cindy Sherman/Untitled #175

If you are even vaguely familiar with the contemporary art world you will have seen Cindy Sherman’s face, albeit in a variety of guises. She often dresses up as a female archetype of some kind and then playfully shows us the limitations of that very archetype. Sherman has created a large body of work in which she is the principal subject of her photographs, acting as the model and medium of her own private, self-contained world. By placing her face front and center, she has become both artist and brand and it is the “Cindy Sherman” formula for which she has become famous. It kind of boils down to this: Cindy Sherman plays Cindy Sherman playing someone else and we’re comforted, because we always know it’s Cindy Sherman, even though, of course, it’s not.

FILM

POSSESSION FILMS ARE POSSESSING US!

an explanation for the rise and rise of the possession film in Hollywood

By Kaitlin Hooper

The Devil Inside Me: no kidding

In the last five years alone there have been more movies about possession than in the previous thirty. As of now there are five possession films currently being shown in theaters: Paranormal Activity 4, Sinister, V/H/S, The Possession and The Apparition. The sheer number of these films begs the question of why Hollywood is cranking out so many of these movies and, more interestingly, why we are choosing to go out to see them, rent them and anxiously await the next one. The answer is both simple and complex, or, better put, the simplicity of the answer manifests itself in multiple ways. We are in the midst of extreme social, economic, political and cultural change and not only is it happening fast but it’s also requiring us to reassess our lives and the world in radically different ways over and over again. Possession is the perfect metaphor for rapid change and it’s appealing because it happens on such a personal level: to people we know, religious authorities, boyfriends, girlfriends and our children.