Photographing Herself, But Revealing Others
女攝影家自拍表現眾生百態
By Carol Vogel

A tantalizing sense of mystery and unease overtake viewers looking at one of Cindy Sherman’s elliptical photographs. Over the course of her 35-year career she has transformed herself into hundreds of personas: the movie star, the valley girl, the angry housewife, the frustrated socialite, the Renaissance courtesan, the menacing clown, even the Roman god.
看辛蒂．雪曼隱晦的照片，會被照片中神秘和不安的挑逗所震懾。她在35年的攝影生涯裡，把自己幻化成幾百種人：電影明星、拜金女、生氣的家庭主婦、受挫的社交名媛、文藝復興時期的名妓、險惡的小丑，甚至羅馬女神。

“None of the characters are me,” she explained. “If it seems too close to me, it’s rejected.”
她解釋道：「這些角色都不是我，如果跟我本人太接近，我就不拍。」

Even as Ms. Sherman, 58, prepared for her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which opens February 26 with more than 170 photographs, she was pondering her next work, perhaps a family portrait where she would play every member.
58歲的雪曼在籌備紐約現代美術館的回顧展之際，已經開始構思下一件作品，也許是張全家福，她將扮演家裡每一個人。她的個展2月26日揭幕，展出170多張照片。

“She’s undoubtedly one of the most influential artists of our time,” said Eva Respini, associate curator of photography at MoMA, “always addressing issues at the heart of our visual culture. In this world of celebrity makeovers, reality TV and YouTube, here is an artist whose different modes of representation seem truer now than when they were made.”
紐約現代美術館攝影展助理策展人伊娃．芮斯皮尼說：「她無疑是當代最有影響力的藝術家之一，總是處理視覺文化最核心的議題。在這個名流改變造型、電視實境秀和YouTube當道的世界裡，這位藝術家的百變造型現在看來比當初拍攝時更真實。」

Among the first artists to come of age in the era of TV and mass media, she makes work that combine Pop and Conceptualism. She was first noticed in the ’70s with her “Untitled Film Stills,” fictional portraits inspired by movies and magazines. With 1981’s “Centerfolds,” a inspired by photographs in Playboy – but with the women clothed – her career took off.
她是在電視和大眾傳播媒體時代嶄露頭角的第一批藝術家之一，她的作品結合普普藝術和觀念藝術。她70年代從電影和雜誌得到靈感的「無題電影劇照」虛構人物照片，讓她初受注意。1981年從「花花公子」雜誌得到靈感的「跨頁照」，只是照片中的女人有穿衣服，讓她的攝影生涯一飛沖天。

By 1982 Ms. Sherman was the subject of an exhibition in Amsterdam and included in Documenta 7 in Germany, as well as the Venice Biennale. Five years later she had a traveling retrospective that was at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. And in 1995 she received a MacArthur grant.
到了1982年，雪曼成為阿姆斯特丹一項展覽的主題，並參加德國的第七屆文獻展和威尼斯雙年展。五年後，她在紐約惠特尼美術館舉辦巡迴回顧展。1995年獲得麥克阿瑟獎學金。

Her “Untitled Film Stills,” for which she developed the film to make the pictures look cracked and grainy, like promotional giveaways, are now considered landmarks of late-20th-century art. (In 1995 MoMA purchased a set for a reported $1 million, an enormous price at the time.)
她的「無題電影劇照」沖洗底片時刻意讓照片看來有裂痕且粒子較粗，像贈送的宣傳照，而今被視為20世紀末藝術的代表性作品。（1995年紐約現代美術館據說以100萬美元買了一組照片，當時是天文數字。）

She refused to titles her works for Janelle Reiring, a co-founder of Metro Pictures, a New York gallery, that is the key to Ms. Sherman’s success: she “doesn’t tell you what to think.”
她拒絕為作品下題，紐約「地鐵錄像」藝廊的共同創辦人珍妮爾．芮林認為，這是雪曼成功的關鍵：她「不告訴你要怎麼想」。

Others have named the series.
其他人為這些系列照片下了題。

Ms. Sherman is often credited with putting photography on the same footing as fine art. In May Philippe Ségalot, a Manhattan dealer, bought a 1981image for a client in which she posed as a teenage girl. For six months it was the most expensive photograph sold at auction, fetching $3.9 million. 
雪曼常被讚譽為把攝影提升到純藝術層次的功臣。曼哈坦藝術商菲立普．塞加勒今年5月代客戶買了一張1981年的照片，照片中她呈少女狀。這張照片賣了390萬美元，曾保持照片最高拍賣價紀錄長達六個月。

“I’ve always been amazed how she could take what seems like such a simple idea and keep reinventing it,” Mr. Ségalot said.
塞加勒說：「她用看來簡單的想法不斷創新的本事，總讓我驚訝。」

Growing up in New York, Ms. Sherman recalls: “I was more interested in being different from other little girls who would dress up as princesses or fairies or a pretty witch. I would be the ugly old witch or the monster.”
雪曼談到在紐約長大的過程時說：「其他小女孩打扮成公主、仙女或美麗的巫婆，而我更有興趣的卻是不同的妝扮。我會扮成又老又醜的巫婆，或者是妖怪。」

One of her first assignments in a college photography class was to confront something that was hard for her. “I took a series of myself naked,” she said. Then, she said, “I would transform my face with makeup into various characters just to pass the time.”
她大學攝影課的第一個作業是挑戰她認為很難的事。她說：「我自拍一系列裸照。」她說：「接著，我把臉化妝成不同的人，只為了殺時間。」

She was dating the artist Robert Longo, who suggested she document herself in her costumes.
她與藝術家龍古約會交往時期，龍古建議她穿戲服自拍。

Starting in 1985, she removed herself from her pictures for a time. One series depicts still lifes of vomit, blood and moldy food. She has said she created these images during difficult periods, like when she was ending their 15-year marriage to the video artist Michel Auder.
1985年起有段時間她的照片中沒有她本人。有一系列照片拍嘔吐物、血和發霉的食物。她說，她在低潮期創作了這些照片，比如她與錄像藝術家米歐德準備結束15年婚姻的時期。

None of these images have been as successful as her “Untitled Film Stills,” or other portraits.
這些照片都不如她的「無題電影劇照」或其他人物照成功。

In recent years technology has changed her work. Digital cameras have enabled her to see her results immediately, without having to wait for film to be developed. And in the MoMA show there are images in which she has digitally altered her face.
近年來科技改變了她的作品。數位相機讓她能立即看到拍的照片，不必等底片沖洗出來。在紐約現代美術館展出的一些照片，她用數位技術修改了她的臉。

“It’s horrifying how easy it is to make changes,” she said.
她說：「這麼容易修改，真嚇人。」

Recently she has begun producing murals, after seeing how male artists would “just fill up an entire wall of painting that is just this gigantic thing,” she said. “I was thinking how pretentious that is. It made me realize not too many women artists think that way.”
她說，她看到男藝術家「畫滿一整面牆，作品如此之大」後，最近開始製作壁畫。她說：「我想，多麼敢炫啊。這讓我發覺能這麼想的女藝術家不多。」

Alone in her studio, she is the subject, the photographer, the director, the makeup artist and the costume stylist.
她獨自在工作室裡，既是被拍的人，也是攝影師、導演、化妝師、造型設計師。

“Whenever I tried to hire people or use friends or family, even if I paid them, I felt like I had to entertain them,” she said. “When I’m working alone, I can push myself. And I don’t complain.”
她說：「每當我試著雇人或找朋友家人幫忙，就算我付錢給他們，我仍感到必須招呼他們。我獨自工作時，我會鞭策自己，而且不會抱怨。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/arts/design/moma-to-showcase-cindy-shermans-new-and-old-characters.html

Slideshow: Queen of Self-portrait
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/02/19/arts/design/20120219-SHERMAN.html

2012-02-28聯合報/G9版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS 田思怡譯原文參見紐時週報十二版上