Cindy is most known for a series called "Untitled Film Stills." These pictures consist of a woman dressed up and pretending, more or less, to be an actress at different points in a career. There was one problem with Cindy's work to which I could not reconcile myself: she is the woman dressed up. Yes, these are often referred to as self-portraits. My friend Mel said she'd volunteer to be in them instead, but I knew I'd have to have more than just a loathing for pictures of myself to remain behind the camera. Then I found an article. A glorious article. In that article, Cindy was interviewed and states that the mistake people make about this series is in calling them self portrait.
DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!
There were other points I could quote, but that did it. I grabbed Mel, her array of wigs, my camera, and a roll of film and got onto the project quickly. The day I brought mine, the first thing Travis (aka Professor Voldy) said was "Wrong. You're not in them." I would like to first point out that I didn't have to say I was mimicking Cindy. The images were that awesome. Still, he argued with me about it. He tried to get me to admit I should have been in them. I wouldn't budge and neither did he.
It was okay, though. Expecting to win an argument against Travis is like expecting that they might decide to start up the show Pushing Daisies again. It's just not likely.
Except then it happened. Me winning, that is. We stopped arguing about it that day. What I refer to is when he told his fine art class this semester that ... and I quote... "Marie won". Yes, he admitted publicly that I won the argument. But when I asked him about it, he vaguely waved me off and tried to restate what he'd "meant". It wasn't until we got into it one day that, in a moment of acting like a five-year-old, he huffed, "Fine! You win! You happy?"
I smiled and confirmed that, yes, I was very happy.
Why do I tell you this story? For a few very good reasons.
First, I could very well be the first student to have gotten Travis to admit defeat. This is huge and may never happen again.
Second, our podcast has a Cindy Sherman episode up. It's the first one about a photographer that we've done, so you need to go listen! Here! (You can use the player on the right.)
Last: hold out hope people! Pushing Daisies has more of a shot than you ever thought before!
