CINDY SHERMAN

  PHOTO ELYSEE

29.03 – 04.08.24 

Cindy Shermanhas been exploring themes of representation and identity for over 40 years. Her portraits have established her as one of the most recognized and influential artists of our time. In the dual role of photographer and model, playing with makeup, wigs and costumes–traditional methods of transformation–Sherman creates portraits of women with similar yet very different features, always using her own body. The sense of fractured identity, characteristic of our contemporary society, is particularly emphasized in her figures, constructed since the 2000s using digital manipulations. In her most recent series, the malleability of the self-image is expressed in these face collages in which Sherman accentuates incongruous facial details. These women who express a variety of emotions are all composites of the artist's own face. Sherman is both behind and in front of the camera, viewer and object. This series shows how complex our identity is, how it is subject to multiple constructions, and how impossible it is to capture in a single image. 

Cindy Sherman is considered to be one of the most important American artists of her generation. Her ground-breaking photographs have interrogated themes around representation and identity in contemporary media for over four decades. In this new body of work, the artist collages parts of her own face to construct the identities of various characters, using digital manipulation to accent the layered aspects and plasticity of the self. Sherman has removed any scenic backdrops or mise-en-scène–the focus of this series is the face. She combines a digital collaging technique using black and white and color photographs with other traditional modes of transformation, such as make-up, wigs and costumes, to create a series of unsettling characters who laugh, twist, squint and grimace in front of the camera. 

To create the fractured characters, Sherman has photographed isolated parts of her body–her eyes, nose, lips, skin, hair, ears–which she cuts, pastes and stretches onto a foundational image, ultimately constructing, deconstructing and then reconstructing a new face. In the double role of both photographer and model, Sherman upends the usual dynamic between artist and subject. Here, the sitter does not technically exist–all portraits are comprised of composites of the artist’s face–however, they still read as classical portraiture and, despite the layers, the image still gives a true impression of a ‘sitter’. 

Tightly cropped, with frames full of hair, stretched-out faces or swathes of material, Sherman’s construction of her characters disrupts the voyeur-gaze and subjectobject binaries that are often associated with traditional portraiture. In works such as Untitled #661 (2023), subtle changes, such as the positioning of a towel, the copy and pasting of an eyebrow from one image to another, or the elongation of a facial feature, alter the entire demeanor and representation of the imagined ‘sitter.’ 

This type of warping of the face is akin to the use of prosthetics that Sherman began using in the mid1980s in series such as History Portraits (1988) or Masks from the 1990s, exploring the more grotesque or abject aspects of humanity. Like her use of costumes, wigs and makeup, the application of prosthetics would often be left exposed, breaking, rather than upholding, any sense of illusion. Similarly, the use of digital manipulation in her new series exaggerates the tensions between identity and artifice. 

 Cindy Sherman, Untitled #631, 2010/2023 © Cindy Sherman, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth 

This is heightened in works such as Untitled #631 (2010/2023) where Sherman combines both black and white and colored fragments, highlighting the presence of the artist’s hand and disrupting any perception of reality, while also harking back to the hand-colored and hand-cut works that she made in the 1970s. By employing this layering technique, Sherman creates a site of multiplicity, exploring the notion that identity is a complex, and often constructed, human characteristic that is impossible to capture in a singular picture. 

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #627, 2010/2023 © Cindy Sherman, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth 

Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue by Hauser & Wirth Publishers. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST 

Born in 1954, Cindy Sherman lives and works in New York. Coming to prominence in the late 1970s with the Pictures Generation group, Sherman first turned her attention to photography at Buffalo State College in the early 1970s. In 1977, shortly after moving to New York City, she began her critically acclaimed series of Untitled Film Stills. Sherman continued to channel and reconstruct familiar personas known to the collective psyche, often in unsettling ways, and by the mid to late 1980s, the artist’s visual language began to explore the more grotesque aspects of humanity through the lens of horror and the abject, as seen in works such as Fairy Tales (1985) and Disasters (1986-89). These highly visceral images saw the artist introduce visible prostheses and mannequins into her work, which would later be used in series such as Sex Pictures (1992) to add to the layers of artifice in her constructed female identities. 

Like Sherman’s use of costumes, wigs and makeup, their application would often be left exposed. Her renowned History Portraits, begun in 1988, used these theatrical effects to break, rather than uphold, any sense of illusion. Since the early 2000s, Sherman has used digital technology to further manipulate her cast of characters in her work. This is evident in her Clown series (2003), Society Portraits (2008) and her Flappers series (2016).

 In 2017, Sherman began using Instagram to upload portraits that utilize several face-altering apps, morphing the artist into a plethora of protagonists in kaleidoscopic settings. Disorientating and uncanny, the posts highlight the dissociative nature of Instagram from reality. 

Sherman’s work has been recognized by numerous grants and awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and the Hasselblad Award. It has also been the subject of several major retrospectives, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 1998, the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2012, the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2019, and at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2023. 

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #659, 2023 © Cindy Sherman, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth 9 PRESS IMAGES © Cindy Sherman, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth 

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #648, 2023 © Cindy Sherman, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth 

MAN RAY LIBERATING PHOTOGRAPH

 PHOTO ELYSEE

29.03 – 04.08.24

This year, Plateforme 10 is celebrating 100 years of Surrealism. In 1924, André Breton published the manifesto of this major artistic movement of the 20th century. Among the artists associated with Breton were Luis Buñuel, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Dora Maar, Dorothea Tanning and a photographer: Man Ray. His photographic work covers a wide range of genres: portraits and nudes, fashion, still life and abstract photography, etc. A multi-faceted artist, he had a pronounced taste for experimentation and new processes: photograms, solarizations, optical manipulations, coupling of positives and negatives, etc. 

A fixture of the Paris art scene in the early 20th century, close to Marcel Duchamp and André Breton, he is one of the few photographers mentioned alongside Dada and Surrealist artists. Man Ray, whose career spanned more than 60 years, is recognized today as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. He took his first photographs in New York in the 1910s. However, it was in the following two decades, while living in Paris, that he abandoned the idea of a career in painting to devote himself to photography. He saw in this medium a creative tool that would enable him to go beyond the representation of reality. He thus tried his hand at abstraction, while photographing the artists he came into contact with in a relatively classical manner. 

Establishing himself as a professional photographer, he opened his own studio, which rapidly became a gathering place for the entire Parisian art scene: Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay, Alberto Giacometti, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst. He made many portraits of artists, writers and intellectuals in his circle, including Coco Chanel, Paul Eluard, James Joyce, Elsa Schiaparelli, Igor Stravinsky and Virginia Woolf. In addition to celebrity portraits, he tried his hand at staging and photographing his female models–Lee Miller, Kiki de Montparnasse and Meret Oppenheim–in a variety of different settings.

To be totally liberated from painting and its aesthetic implications” was the first avowed aim of Man Ray (United States, 1890-1976), who began his career as a painter. Photography was one of the major breakthroughs of modern art and led to a rethinking of notions of representation. In the 1920s and 30s, the photographic medium came to the forefront of the avant-garde movement, and Man Ray soon made a name for himself with his virtuosity. As a studio portraitist and fashion photographer, but also as an experimental artist who explored the potential of photography with the people around him, Man Ray was a multi-faceted figure. Considered one of the 20th century’s major artists, close to Dada and then Surrealism, he photographed Paris’ artistic milieu between the wars. 

Curated from a private collection, the exhibition explores the artist’s extensive social contacts while presenting some of his most iconic works. In addition to providing a dazzling who’s who of the Parisian avant-garde, the works also highlight the innovations in photography made by Man Ray in Paris in the 1920s and 30s. He took his first photographs in New York in the 1910s, but it was in Paris that his career took off. 

Even before opening his studio in Montparnasse in 1922, Man Ray worked for a year in his hotel room. The photographer's reputation grew, and before long, the artist's studio was flourishing. Fashion photographs alternated with portraits of the artistic figures of the day who had made Paris’ notoriety: Marcel Duchamp, whom he met in New York in 1915 and who introduced him to the Parisian artistic elite, as well as Robert Delaunay, Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti and Pablo Picasso, among others, who posed for the photographer. His portraits also included Ballets Russes dancers and guests at the Count de Beaumont's ball. 

As soon as he arrived in Paris in the summer of 1921, Man Ray immediately became part of the Parisian intelligentsia of the Roaring Twenties. He met Jean Cocteau, who was himself a figure of the Parisian art scene, André Breton, Francis Picabia, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse and Max Ernst. He also met Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Igor Stravinsky, Ernest Hemingway, Arnold Schoenberg and James Joyce, whom he photographed for the Anglo-American bookshop Shakespeare and Company. But Man Ray was not merely content to have celebrities pose in his studio or to explore the female nude genre by working with those he considered his muses, such as Lee Miller, Kiki de Montparnasse, Meret Oppenheim and Adrienne Fidelin. 

Man Ray also experimented in the darkroom, transforming the photographic medium into a powerful tool of artistic expression, even going so far as to do away with the camera when, in 1921-1922, he began creating photograms, which he coined "rayographs" after himself. He explained that working with light in the darkroom allowed him to free himself from painting, so convinced was he of the visual power of his experiments.

Man Ray, Alice Prin, known as Kiki de Montparnasse, around 1925 © Man Ray 2015 Trust / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich 

Man Ray, Dora Maar, 1936 © Man Ray 2015 Trust / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich 

Also in the 1920s, he experimented with the moving image and produced four films. The rhythm and freedom offered by the cinema complemented his photographic work, in which he saw a close relationship between film and poetry. This is why he gave his film Emak Bakia (1926) the subheading of "cinépoème". Without ever abandoning portraiture, he experimented with other techniques in the 1930s: solarization, overprinting and other distortions. 

From the outset, photography has been more than a simple process of reproduction. For him, images were not taken fleetingly, but meticulously realized indoors. Unlike Henri Cartier-Bresson who opted for the spontaneous gesture and saw the street as a privileged playground, Man Ray composed and staged his photographs. The studio provided him with a space in which to explore his imagination. Some of the themes dear to the Surrealists can be found in his work: femininity, sexuality, strangeness, the boundary between dream and reality. His nude studies were part of his artistic research, which he developed in close collaboration with his companions who were part of the Parisian art scene. 

Kiki de Montparnasse– the woman with the f-holes of a violin on her back– whose real name was Alice Prin, was a dancer, singer, actress and painter who posed for artists such as Chaïm Soutine and Kees van Dongen. Lee Miller, a fellow New Yorker like him, had begun a modeling career in the United States but wanted to move to the other side of the camera. She met the photographer in Paris in 1929 when she was 22-years old, and became active in the Surrealist movement. More than a muse, she became his collaborator, learning photography at his side. Together, they discovered the technique of solarization. 

Another artist with whom Man Ray had a professional and romantic relationship was the Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim, who was close to the Surrealist scene before pursuing an independent career as an artist. Man Ray loved the freedom his photographic creations afforded him, and portraits and fashion photography enabled him to earn a living. It was in his studio that he embarked on a series of visual experiments. His portraits, which are relatively classical in style, testify not only to his commercial success, but also to his great sociability. Artists from Montparnasse, Surrealists, fashion and nightlife celebrities, patrons of the arts, Americans in Paris– the entire artistic elite–passed through his studio, as was the case with Nadar in the 19th century. 

Almost 50 years after Man Ray's death, his photographs continue to fascinate us. His impact on the history of the medium is undeniable, and he served as an inspiration to photographers of the caliber of Berenice Abbott, Bill Brandt and Lee Miller. Man Ray remains one of the most famous photographers of the 20th century. He never stopped creating, without prejudice or constraint. 

More Images

Man Ray, Rayograph Flowers, 1925 © Man Ray 2015 Trust / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich

Man Ray, Nancy Cunard, 1925 © Man Ray 2015 Trust / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich

Man Ray,  Noire et Blanche, 1926 © Man Ray 2015 Trust / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich

Man Ray, Fashion photograph, circa 1935 © Man Ray 2015 Trust / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich 

Man Ray, Bottle-holder by Marcel Duchamp, circa 1920 © Man Ray 2015 Trust / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich 

Man Ray, Jacqueline Goddard, circa 1932 © Pierre gassmann / ADAGP © Man Ray 2015 Trust / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich 7 

Book

Published in connection with an exhibition opening at Photo Elysée in spring 2024, this book presents more than one hundred and fifty of Man Ray's portraits, primarily from the 1920s and '30s.

Man Ray (1890–1976) was a man both of and ahead of his time. With his conceptual approach and innovative techniques, he liberated photography from previous constraints and opened the floodgates to new ways of thinking about the medium.

A close friend of Marcel Duchamp and André Breton, he was one of the few photographers to be mentioned among the Dada artists and surrealists. He also worked as a fashion photographer, first for Vogue and later for Harper's Bazaar and Vanity Fair. Renowned as the creator of Ingres's Violin—a photograph from 1924 that broke records when it was sold for $12.4 million in 2022—Man Ray remains an influential figure in the worlds of art, fashion, and pop culture, with many other artists referencing his work.

Published in connection with an exhibition at Photo Elysée and in the centennial year of the publication of André Breton's Surrealist Manifesto, Man Ray presents more than one hundred and fifty of Man Ray’s portraits, primarily from the 1920s and '30s. It includes portraits of the leading lights of the Paris art scene, among them Marcel Duchamp, Robert Delaunay, Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti, and Pablo Picasso, as well as a selection of his fashion work. As an innovator of photographic techniques and compositional form, Man Ray found the studio portrait—be it of the artists and writers with whom he had longstanding friendships or of the objects and sculptures he collected—to be the playground in which he could express the visual wit and experimentation for which he is renowned.

Contributors

Nathalie Herschdorfer

Author

Nathalie Herschdorfer is the director of Photo Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. Her previous books include Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage, Body, and Coming into Fashion.

Wendy Grossman

Text By

Wendy A. Grossman is an independent scholar and curator. She is the author of Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens.