El autorretrato en la fotografía contemporánea

Abstract

In this investigation, the works of photographers Claude Cahun, Vivian Maier, Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin are analyzed. The four artists have a fundamental production for the understanding of the relationship between the appropriation of their own image through photography and a deep reflection about the problems of gender identity and the cultural construction of this identity. The work of the four artists has given rise to many other photographers who are based on these searches and this transcendence makes them fundamental for the understanding of contemporary art. Photographers use the series that elaborate the concept of self-portrait as a way of establishing a point of view about the construction they make of their own gender identity. In these series they pose as models for photographic portraits acting a role of stereotyped women, showing that gender is a cultural construction. This cultural construction is evident from two different places, on the one hand the history of art and on the other hand the costume. Thus manifesting that the construction of femininity is a stereotype manufactured by society and traditionally reproduced by art.