Digital Storytelling

Year 10 Art: The Digital Artist and the Story teller

Students have created work inspired by the photography of the world famous artist Cindy Sherman’s, “Untitled Film Stills”.

Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills is a suite of 70 black-and-white photographs made over the course of three years in which the artist posed in the guises of various generic female film characters, among them, ingénue, working girl, vamp, and lonely housewife. Staged to resemble scenes from 1950s and 60s Hollywood, film noir, B movies, and European art-house films, the printed images mimic in format, scale, and quality the often-staged “stills” used to promote films. By photographing herself in such roles, Sherman inserts herself into a dialogue about stereotypical portrayals of women.

Students have created their own archetypal roles and appropriated her work, presenting their own imaginings. They have been able to focus on the art of storytelling and how to communicate a dialogue to the viewer in just one frame. They have had to consider, the situation, environment, lighting, depth of field and photo conventions to support their message. The exhibition will be up in the “Beugelaar” space down in C Block.

Jerome Rush