The largest show of this influential photographer’s work to appear in San Francisco opened recently after appearing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York to a complex response by East Coast critics, with a few questioners, if not quite dissidents, providing leavening to the otherwise universal praise. But a complex response never seemed more appropriate than here.Sherman’s work – often charming and witty, beautifully crafted, and slyly probing – is nearly impossible to dislike. And yet, it seems equally impossible, or even desirable, to fully embrace. Which may be the definition of contemporary artistic greatness.
We on the West Coast can now survey the career (up to now) of this popular, fascinating and troubling artist who has shown, with an almost unfailing sureness of touch, how to combine work of great lightness and skill with penetrating, even disturbing, questions, not least of which is “What is this baffling aberration in a seemingly heartless and mindless universe, a human being?”
The greater part of Sherman’s work is made up of photographs of herself, usually taken in her studio, in costumes, wigs and makeup, depicting imaginary examples of well-known types, from characters in movies to figures from the history of art to eastern seaboard grandes dames. She works in series, her first, and still best known, being the “Untitled Film Stills” from the late 1970s: black-and-white, deliberately cheap-looking but highly evocative fictional stills from imaginary art, noir and B-movies from the ’50s and ’60s; her latest major series is of big, garishly full-color blow-ups of herself made-up as ageing doyennes of high-society. And in the great majority of the pictures,Sherman, like a great actress, a Meryl Streep of the black box, a Shakespeare of a thousand discarded selves, both appears, and disappears, in an imaginary space that recedes infinitely behind the photograph’s slick surface.
In the early ’80s Sherman created a so-called “centerfold” series, large color photos, based on the centerfolds seen in men’s magazines, of reclining young women, fully clothed but in moments of great emotional vulnerability; examples, not of erotic, but of emotional voyeurism. In these pictures, curiously enough,Shermanis most readily identifiable as herself (as one can see from the occasional candid shots taken of her by other photographers at unguarded moments), with minimal use of costume and makeup, and little more defense than the mask of an expression.
Appearing in the show are also Sherman’s “fairy tale,” “disaster” and “sex pictures” (a peculiarly ugly series, though not surprising: how many artists have ever had a healthy, happy relationship with their own sexuality, candid yet discreet and kind, to themselves, their lovers, and their audience?), a “clown series” (perhaps the only weak images here; creating an artificial identity from an already artificial identity provides the show’s only shruggable moment), grand, booming large-scale photos based on old-master paintings (the so-called “History Portraits”), a “headshot series” of “ordinary” women (and some males) hiding, so to speak, in full view, and a “fashion” series that sends up the very fashions and designers the pictures ostensibly advertise.
And all of these (except for the relatively few disaster and sex pictures) are of the photographer herself in a myriad masks, this woman of a thousand faces who would put Lon Chaney to shame: the opposite of self-portraits, these are pictures of an artist in full flight, apparently, from the self.
But are they?
It’s impossible to discuss Sherman’s photographs without immediately bringing up the issues of “identity” and selfhood, its continuity or lack thereof, its relation to image, its sabotaging by image, its relation to the construction, and deconstruction, of femininity, sexuality, gender roles, and other biosocial categories, its possible nonexistence outside the funhouse of psychosocial illusion, and so forth.
The very variety of her images – and the peculiar vulnerability that often peeks out through the impasto of costume and mask – suggests something else: the hiddenness of the self, the ego absconditus, behind its image; the image as protective covering, as camouflage, as shield, as tool and, when necessary, as weapon.
I had the unpleasant feeling, after looking hard at Sherman’s photographs for two hours while preparing to write this review, that everyone I passed in the streets outside the museum was wearing a costume. The whole world suddenly looked like a Halloween party. Was it even possible to decipher people based on how they appeared? If their image was so constructed, so contrived, how could I possibly get past it to their “real” thoughts, feelings, selves? Even when they spoke, how could I trust what they were saying? Not if course that they would deliberately lie – but then, how could they help it? Are we all just actors playing out a theatrical illusion of who we think we are, want to be, are afraid we might be?
If you leave the show a little shaken in your certainties about yourself and the world around you (I told myself), you’ve probably had the right reaction. Not thatShermanintends to shake us up. She just likes to dress up, according to her interviews, and always has.
The ultimate photograph in this retrospective, the one that lingers more pertinaciously than any other, was one of the disaster series. At first it just looks like a big picture of a strip of dark red soil, soaked with movie blood or red paint. But then, as I looked at it, I saw it resolve into its actual subject: a crushed, skinned unrecognizable face.
Christopher Bernard is a writer, poet, and critic living in San Francisco. He is author of the novel A Spy in the Ruins and co-editor of the webzine Caveat Lector.
At 9:30, after everyone else has gone home for the day, I sit at my office desk and unzip the side pocket of my black man-satchel, where I keep my less scrupulous effects: an eighth of marijuana, my bowl, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, my half-full flask (featuring Captain Morgan’s spiced rum), Prozac, and Adderall.
I twist off the child-proof lid to my Adderall bottle (they call them “Amphetamine Salts”), remove a 20-mg peach-colored pill, and put it on my desk. Then I place the bottom of the bottle over the pill, make a fist with my right hand, and come down on it hard. It crumbles under the force of the blow. I pull from my wallet my driver’s license, press it down on the chunks of amphetamines, and twist it back and forth until the grains constitute a fine powder before using my license to shepherd the powder into a fine line. I peel a sheet off the pink sticky-note pad on my desk and roll it into a tube, adhering it to itself. Leaning over the powder, I put the tube of paper in my right nostril, put a finger over my left, and track the line as I snort the powder. It tickles and itches like maggots in an open wound. Within seconds, I’m light-headed.
I wouldn’t recommend snorting amphetamines for everyone, but it’s always worked for me.
I’ve been using it to an unprecedented extent for the last three or four days, staying awake and reading, writing, and playing online poker. Whenever I feel my eyelids getting heavy, I pull out another pill and in my nose it goes.
I collect the film of powder that remains on my desk with my index finger and place it inside my bottom lip.
My lip tingles.
I put the bottle away and take out the bowl, the lighter, and the eighth of weed. Then I open the window and the door to my office and I turn on the fan, as I have little interest in setting off the smoke detector. I pack the bowl and take a hit. And another, pulling deep and holding it half a minute. Tilting my head back, I do “The Dragon,” exhaling two streams of smoke through my nostrils. I do this again. And again, and again.
Enough for now—everything in moderation, I remind myself.
I put the still-smoking bowl down on my desk and it slowly extinguishes.
Opening a new browser, I go to my calendar. A little math informs me that today is the fortieth since my close friend since childhood, Tommy, was killed in Iraq. Pulling out my flask, I take a shot in his honor. Then I switch over to Google Reader. Scanning my subscription list, I see that there are a few new neuroscience articles: Prozac and neurogenesis, space-time synesthesia, and a story on attempts to give Jesus H. Christ a Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality profile. The article’s conclusion is that his personality was too complex to label with any of the sixteen options.
I finish my bowl, then pack and smoke another before reading an article on the heightened pain tolerance in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and another on Joshua Norton, the mad “Emperor of the United States and Defender of Mexico.”
My reading material over the last few days has gravitated towards articles and essays on two subjects in particular: the “technological singularity” and secret societies (In particular, I’m reading about the Freemasons—I just have to know: What the hell is it that they actually do these days? Are they still the international political force from which their reputation is derived?).
The technological singularity—the notion of exponentially developing emergent technologies and the emergence of some kind of superintelligence, causing a paradigm shift in human experience—fascinates me especially, as does the concept of intelligence itself. I’ve been feeling maybe a little grand and/or grandiose with regards to my own intelligence over the last few weeks; I don’t much like myself, but I do like my intelligence. It’s what people tend to notice first when they meet me, and I’ve been noticing them noticing it more and more over the last month or so while I’ve been ramping up—my thoughts are racing, racing faster and faster, and I feel better, smarter, more capable than I’ve ever felt before. It’s probably got something to do with all the amphetamines passing through my blood-brain barrier. Maybe it’s rewiring my mind. Or maybe my self-perception has been distorted by all the weed I’ve been smoking; but I choose to reject that possibility out of hand.
As the weed continues to kick in, I realize that I’ve lost track of the time. I check the display on my monitor: 10:25. Still enough time to make the 11 pm train and avoid having to walk the three miles back to my apartment. I finish the bowl and put it, the lighter, the bag of weed, and my bottle of Adderall back into the black satchel, then throw on my red college hoodie.
Two years ago, I graduated early with a respectable 3.22 GPA, but my parents, my professors, and I—we all knew how little work I’d done, how little time I’d left myself to write papers before their deadlines, and that I spent more time drunk or high than I did on my studies. I only started taking Prozac for my OCD as a sophomore, and I wasn’t put on Adderall until the summer after my college graduation. But, I think, even if I’d been on both from the beginning, I’d still have been weird, I’d still have done drugs, and I’d still have this nagging feeling that I’m not quite alright.
I make a trip to the bathroom. After taking a leak I wash my hands, then glance briefly at my tired but buzzing reflection in the mirror. The young man I see is gaunt, with high and hard cheekbones, dirty blond hair, sideburns that come down all the way down to the corner of his short mustache, and big brown, dilated eyes, the whites of which are red.
Back in the office, I check the monitor display again: 10:50. Time to get going.
I think about the hour, the darkness, and the walk, and I get maybe a little paranoid: it’s late, the subway will be mostly empty—providing an ideal time for criminals to do their nefarious things—and then there’s the walk from the station back to my apartment. What to do?
I think of ways to protect myself, things to use for defense. There’s a black metal shaft from a broken microphone stand in the corner behind my desk. I take it and, thinking about how to conceal it, come up with an idea. I’ll tape the rod to my leg in two places. I find the masking tape and jerry-rig the tape job so that I can slide the rod out easily. Then I roll my pant-leg down over the apparatus I’ve created and pack up to leave.
Outside, I take the coiled ear buds out of my pocket and plug them into the little red IPod Shuffle clasped onto one of my belt loops with my one hand and put the ear buds in with the other. I hit play, and Neighborhood # 2 (Laika), by Arcade Fire, picks up where I’d left off before, with the line: “Our mother should have just name you Laika!”
I skip back to start over from the beginning. The song always affects me on a personal level—what gets me is the idea of an innocent dog sent up into space in an experiment for the furthering of mankind’s obsession with space travel. Laika’s sent off so that we might learn whether life in a manned spacecraft is viable. But her survival is of no import to the cold scientists: giving her neither food nor a plan for return, the dog’s fate is known from the start. There’s something of me in it, something of my life, but it’s something I can’t quite put words to. All I know is that I am Laika.
Down at the subway platform, I hear the low rattling and creaking of an approaching subway car. As it groans into the station, I gaze through the nearly empty and decreasingly blurry cars. I think of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
The train slows to a stop and the doors open. I enter and sit in the closest seat on the left, across from a young couple and a few seats down from a homeless man sleeping with his chin on his chest. The couple looks at me and then they look away. People always look away. And I don’t know why.
The doors close and the train begins to roll along, and I notice a pungent odor in the car. It smells like urine, and it seems to originate at the homeless man. Making a valiant effort to ignore the smell, I open the main compartment of my man-satchel and pull out my copy of Hesse’s Siddhartha. I open to the bookmarked page and begin reading, but before long start to feel drowsy. The amphetamines are still in my system, I can feel them, but the weed is taking over. Before the first stop, I’m already asleep.
I come to when a station worker gently nudges my shoulder. I glance around the car. The couple is gone. The homeless man is gone, too, save for the smell of piss he’s left behind. He must not have heard the PA system’s reminder to not forget your belongings.
Realizing I’m at the end of the line, I ask when the next inbound train leaves. The man shakes his head and says that the last train has already left. It’ll start running again at 5:00.
I thank him and leave the car. I take the escalator up to ground level and study the map on a wall to get my bearings.
A heavy mist shrouds the streets outside. I can’t see more than twenty feet ahead of me. My ears begin to ring and I wonder if maybe it has something to do with the weather. I start down the street that looks about right on the map, but soon it curves to the right and out of sight towards God knows where. I turn onto another street, look up and, seeing that the night sky is completely obscured by a dark and heavy haze, realize that I won’t be able to count on the stars as reference points. And weed is not a navigational boon. Who knew?
The road soon forces a choice: Do I continue along the path I’ve followed, or do I veer off onto the grassy path to the left? I choose the latter. As I walk, the metal pipe begins to chafe against my leg.
Just ahead, a white squirrel untangles itself from the brush to the right of the path, turns its head sideways, perhaps curious, and then freezes, staring at me. I stop walking, intuition telling me that there’s something wrong with this squirrel. I see what looks like a bulge of fat protruding from its belly.
My mind races. There is something else uncanny about this squirrel. Though frozen and fixated, it isn’t even remotely anxious or fearful. Aren’t squirrels supposed to be afraid of people? I walk over to it, and even then it shows no sign of fear. Is it just sick? Injured? I crouch down and chirp at it, holding my hand out, and it approaches. It reaches me and touches its nose to my fingers, and only then does it wander back across the grass and disappear into the brush. I continue down the road, puzzled. Squirrels aren’t supposed to act this way. What’s wrong with it? And what the hell is with that bulge?
Around a bend, the road opens up onto a large, empty parking lot surrounded by big rectangular buildings. At the top of the largest building, a neon blue sign reads “Pfizer.” I’ve wandered into a pharmaceutical industrial park.
I start off across the parking lot, thinking that I just might be able to find a main road on the other side. But no such luck. Worse, the metal pipe is really harassing my leg now, and I feel a wetness trickling down my shin. Past the other end of the parking lot is a road, and on that road there is a bus stop. I head that way to see check the schedule and see whether there’s a late-night bus service. There isn’t. My leg is really starting to hurt now, so I pull up my pant-leg and see a trail of blood rolling down my shin and into my sock. To stop the blood, I pull a few tissues out of my man-satchel and press them against the wound and hold them there for a few minutes. Once the bleeding’s stopped, I remove the tissues and examine them.
It might be the weed, but the thought crosses my mind that maybe my arrival at Pfizer means something; maybe the bleeding does too. And my next thought? Pfizer must need my blood. There’s something special about it, something that they need. So, Good Samaritan that I am, I leave the bloody tissues on the bench to give them a free sample. But more’ll cost ‘em.
I continue down the street and happen upon a y-intesection. Left, and it runs around a bend and disappears into the woods; right, and it goes straight. In the distance, along the path to the right, I see the florescent glow of streetlamps. So I choose right. As I approach the streetlamps, an intersecting road beyond them comes into view.
Walking under the streetlamps, I hear them make the whirring sound they sometimes do and I feel the sensation of being watched. Directly under the lamps the noise is loud—louder than I remember having heard it on previous such occasions, and my hairs shoots up on end.
I hear an engine start up. A black Mercedes coupe turns on its headlights and rolls through the intersection, its headlights shining brightly, casting light across a sign: a capital “T” surrounded by a circle, and the words “Alewife Station” printed underneath. I’m relieved to see the familiar “T” symbol—soon I’ll be someplace recognizable. The coupe slows down as I approach, and now I know something’s off. Looking at the passenger’s window, I see only black tinted glass and my reflection in it, my earring shimmering under the light of a streetlamp. When I get a little closer, the coupe rolls off down the road, providing a touch of relief.
After about ten minutes I see another sign for Alewife Station. Then there’s one for the bike path between Alewife and Davisstations. I look at my watch. 2:00 am. Damn, it’s late. But it’s too early too. I’ll have to wait four hours for the first train toDavis, but I can be there within half an hour if I take the bike path.
I have some steam left—thanks to the slight buzz of the Adderall—and I decide to walk it. Arriving at Alewife, I follow the signs to the winding bike path just behind the parking lot. The path is flanked by fields of high grass held in by chain-linked fences on both sides. It reminds me a little of the corn “maizes” back in Vermont—they’re tourist traps, to be sure, but there’s a certain appeal to those labyrinths, and I’ve returned to one in particular every few years since childhood. They change the pattern every year, but there’s always a bell tower near the middle, providing a reference point for travelers, much as a lighthouse provides one for sailors. There’s usually a very simple, efficient route to the end of the maze, but it almost never becomes evident until after you’ve made it through to the other side and picked up a map to trace your path.
Soon, the chain-linked fences and grass give way to suburban Cambridge. The path crosses a road, and then another—they’re busy roads by day, but tonight there is only a single car idling with its headlights on. The path dips into a narrow, wooded area and, as I continue, I look into the back yards of the nearest inhabitants. In one back yard, I see tires—maybe fifty or sixty of them—and the tires are surrounded by a ring of traffic cones. I wonder, what do the details of their lives say about them? Obviously, they’re hoarders. But why the tires and traffic cones? Noticing a rocking chair on the back porch, I wonder, who sits there? I slowly pass the yard, speculating about the people who live there.
Before long I reachDavis Square. From there, my apartment is only a four-minute walk. But thinking about how close I am only makes me more tired.
***
As I unlock the back door, I can feel my eyelids beginning to droop. I push open the door and walk into the dark entryway. I close the door and the last remnants of light disappear. I lock the door. Hands outstretched, I feel around for the banister and then, finding it, stumble up the stairs to the second floor landing. For a moment I feel the urge to go back and check that the door is locked, but the urge passes. Fuck you, OCD. I know it’s locked.
I look down the hall. My roommates’ lights are off and their doors closed. Mine is open. I reach around the frame and flip the switch, casting light on the clothes, half-empty vitamin water bottles, DVDs, half-unpacked boxes, and unquantifiable quantities of cigarette and marijuana ash. I take off my satchel, kick off my shoes, and pack one last bowl before bed. I only manage two hits before passing out with my bowl on my chest.
Peter Lynch hails from Vermont and lists The Catcher in the Rye as his favorite book. Besides being a writer, he works as a data forecasting consultant; therefore he is able to describe his job as “predicting the future”! He can be reached at petersklynch@gmail.com.
Sometimes I sit here all alone
Thinking of a time when I will be heard
Can you help me?
Does anybody hear me?
Sometimes I just wish
Wish to be heard
Wish to be heard as a person in this world
Most days I sit here alone and unheard
I know I’m not six feet under yet
I am here
All I need is to be heard
Does anybody hear me?!
‘Cause I’m singing loudly here
Does anybody hear me?!
‘Cause I’m crying loudly here
Stop me from turning invisible
‘Cause I’m not heard, not here, not seen, and all alone
Please hear me!!!!
Please see me!!!!
I want to exist in this world
So please please
Stop me from becoming invisible in this (world)
Does anybody see me?!
‘Cause I’m standing over here
Singing at the top of my lungs
(I want to be heard, I want to be seen. Please don’t leave me alone)
Does anybody hear me?!
‘Cause I’m singing loudly here
Does anybody hear me?!
Does anybody see me?!
‘Cause I’m over here
And I am over this (hell)
Do you hear me yet?!
Do you see me yet?!
I am going BIG! Or I’m going HOME!!
Singing at the top of my lungs
Standing on the top of this table
(Wishing to be heard. Needing to exist in this world)
DOES ANYBODY HEAR ME!!!!
Have You Ever Been
Have you ever been Don’t forget you’re not alone
Made fun of Don’t let them win
Abused Don’t let go of yourself
Raped
Used Well
Have you ever been
Well you know you’re not Made fun of
alone Tortured
We’re all here for you Abused
Give us a call Raped
Used
Have you ever been
Made fun of Victims unite
Abused To be victims no more
Raped To show them we can stand
Used To show them we are survivors
STAND UP
When you need help and
ask FIGHT
We know your pain AGAINST
You have a friend THOSE WHO SEEK TO HARM
Have you ever been Have you ever been
Made fun of Made fun of
Tortured Tortured
Abused Abused
Raped Raped
Used Used
?
Someday
I’m gonna live like these years never happened
I’m gonna let you go
I’m gonna forget all about you
I’m gonna move on
I’m gonna get past this
I’m gonna be free to be me
I’m gonna be
I’m gonna be content with my life
I’m gonna get what I want and need out of life
I’m gonna learn to live
Live for me
I’m gonna be me
I’m gonna be rid of you once and for all
I’m gonna discover the real me
I’m gonna be and find what I have to be and find
I’m gonna learn to love again
I’m gonna be happy
I’m gonna cry less
I’m gonna smile more
It’s all gonna happen for me
Someday
The Hourglass
The hourglass is glued to the table
The sands of time running out
Not in our favor
The hourglass is glued to the table
The sands of time running out
Can’t break it, can’t stop it
The hourglass is glued to the table
The sands of time running out
The time is flying by, leaving me behind
The hourglass is glued to the table
The sands of time running out
Running out
Wasting to much time
The hourglass is glued to the table
The sands of time running out
Not in our favor
Oh oh
The hourglass is glued to the table
Oh oh
Glued to the table
The sands of time running out
Oh oh
The hourglass is glued to the table
The sands of time running out
Stealing all our yesterdays
Showings us all our tomorrows
Oh oh
The hourglass is glued to the table
The sands of time running out
No time to waste, no time to look back
The hourglass is glued to the table
The sands of time running out
Turns out it is in our favor
Linda Allen is an American from Oklahoma who may be reached at lindaallen4119@att.net and welcomes comments and thoughts on her writing.
