Untitled #296 1994

Cindy Sherman made this image using photography. It looks like a stage set and I'm immediately imagining the act of setting everything up – the lights, the costume, the disco ball – and then the artist arranging herself in the scene. I’m sympathizing with the artist and imagining what it might have been like to create. Sherman could have been thinking about the history of art while making this image. It reminds me of a Caravaggio painting or a Victorian portrait. The colors are muted, and everything seems to exist in a perpetual state of dusk. The feathers in the headpiece are dramatic and eye-catching. It's possible that Sherman wants us to feel a sense of melancholy. Photography, like painting, is a form of expression. Artists throughout time, inspire one another’s creativity. Both painting and photography embrace ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning over fixed or definitive readings.