Face to Face: Personification, Identity, and Self-Portraiture in the Early Work of Cindy Sherman and Nikki S. Lee

Photographers Cindy Sherman (b. 1954, United States) and Nikki S. Lee (b. 1970, South Korea) challenge our ability to separate the real from the constructed in their respective series, "Untitled Film Stills" (1977-1980) and "Projects" (1997-2001). The present comparative study demonstrates how the two series blur the lines between art maker and art object, fact and fiction, intrinsic identity and adoptable personae, and, female and `other.' In doing so, these series point back to the camera as a tool of systematic visual representation that creates the familiar cultural and gendered personae the artists perform via masquerade and impersonation. My research also extends beyond the artists' visual and procedural similarities (and the distinctions between them) to consider the separate cultural and historical contexts that shaped their work - contexts that enabled women from different generations and cultural backgrounds to use their likeness and photography as vehicles to explore constructions of human identity.