Cindy Sherman has spent thirty years making herself up and photographing herself as different characters; her photos are in all the major contemporary art museums. Her project is about how fluid image and self are - how we can change ourselves using costume and the camera.
Chemotherapy has changed my looks so radically in the last four years that I have begun to play Cindy Sherman a little. I looked very much the same from age 12 to age 42, and then suddenly lost my hair and eyebrows; hair grew back silver and I refused to dye it; got cancer again and have been in chemo for nearly a year.
My wigs have made me look different, because I have not tried to replicate my long voluminous locks of yore, nor did I choose to go with curly silver hair similar to what I had last year - too granny-looking. For the first time in my life I have styled hair, thanks to wig technology.
Several times during chemo I have gotten out the camera and photographed myself, sometimes with no wig, other times with wig, turban, or head scarf. I was never interested in self-portraits before, but now the possibilities for changing my looks fascinate me; and I also document effects of surgery and drugs on my body. No, I won't share the gory details.
Today an article online about Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live inspired me to try to get the Sarah Palin look myself. My old wig has the bangs, but it doesn't have the updo volume. And I really need false eyelashes to get that VPILF mojo going. I had been wanting an Amy Winehouse wig (Tried to make me go to chemo, but I say NO, NO, NO). Now I really have an excuse. Gov. Palin for Halloween.
These pictures were taken with my Nikon held up with one hand - hence the awkward angles and poses.
I'm going to get a makeup consultant. I wanna be a MILF. Instead I look like a very serious academic. Don't I look like a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies with tenure at a top university? That's probably the career I was supposed to have had I not been an ADD-afflicted boho artist.
What a humorous photo. My gut reaction is that you look very Jewish, not like a Middle Eastern studies professor, but perhaps more like a businesswear buyer for Saks in Manhattan.
Posted by: Alison Chaiken | September 15, 2008 at 09:25 PM
...Or one of those smartly-dressed Orthodox women one sees walking in Jewish neighborhoods in L.A. or NYC on Shabbat. (Sorry Leila!)
Posted by: Richard Silverstein | September 16, 2008 at 12:32 AM
You are a beautiful person, inside and out.
Unlike me, the cynic, with an ugly soul.
Posted by: americangoy | September 16, 2008 at 08:12 PM