Crossover Series

Cindy Sherman received an MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1976, where she studied photography. During this time she was also involved with HallWalls, an alternative gallery space in Buffalo. She is best known for her black and white Untitled Film Stills, which she made in the late 70s and early 80s. In carefully designed settings, Sherman placed herself, using costumes, wigs, and makeup, in various scenarios suggetive of B-movies from the 1950s. These tableaux touch on feminist theories of representation and body politics, though their mysterious quality allowed differing interpretations based on the perceived irony in the work. The shifting, changeable self that Sherman presented was closely allied with performance art, and influenced much of postmodern art production to come. Sherman's later photographic series, generally in large, color formats, included themes of pornography, Old Masters, and fairy-tales. In this tape, Sherman has assumed both roles as artist and interviewer.

This title is also available on Crossover Series.

Richard Prince appropriates images from commercial advertising and travelogues for his photographs. Choosing these images for their melodramatic, super-real power, he then isolates their stylistic realism to accentuate its rhetoric. In this portrait/performance, Prince narrates experiences that demonstrate his extreme sensitivity to appearances and context. He relates the event of buying his first car as the imprinting of a certain aesthetic impression.

This title is also available on Crossover Series.

Laurie Simmons’s photographs are brought to life in Laurie Simmons: A Teaser, MICA-TV’s portrait of the acclaimed photographer. In the early 1980s, Simmons focused on underwater photographs of women, which suggested the stylized tableaux of Esther Williams’s water ballets. Taping through a glass window in the bottom of a swimming pool, Michael Owen and Carole Ann Klonarides recorded Simmons while she was shooting her models. The viewer observes Simmons’s “bathing beauties” swimming in unchoreographed abandon, as Owen and Klonarides transform the video screen into an evocative, blue-filtered aquarium. 

This title is also available on Crossover Series.