The Looking Glass Series

• Prize
• Photographer
  Lynn Goldsmith, United States
• Date of Photograph
  online
• Studio
  Lynn Goldsmith Ltd.
• Website
  http://www.lynngoldsmith.com

I explore issues of identity through self-portrayals, in which I assume different guises that comment on gender, sexuality, beauty and logic. I act out various roles by injecting myself into settings that originate with photographs of window displays in New York City. By digitally removing objects, then adding new elements with additional photographs, I highlight the psychological relationship between what we see and what we imagine.

Altering my hair and make-up to create personae from fairy tales, myths, and cinematic moments, I place the self-portrait digitally into the smooth skin of the mannequin. Using my face as a stage for presenting different looks undermines any attempt to fix my image. In some photographs I also become characters who share the fictional narrative with the mannequin. Experimenting with the audience's understanding of photography as a documentation of reality, I catapult myself from the past, where fashion communicated who was in power, to the present where fashion can also be a symbol of pulling down social barriers and overthrowing elitism. The point of the series is to fracture the single, solitary sense of self, to propose identity as multiple projections of invented selves: to discover what makes us human.

• Biography
  With over 100 record covers to her credit, 10 books of her work, numerous awards, and covers of most of the world?s prestigious magazines including: Rolling Stone, Life, Sports Illustrated, US, and Elle, Lynn Goldsmith never stops making images. Though best known for her portraits of entertainment icons, her work is completely diversified. She has done travel stories for National Geographic, been a photojournalist covering national disasters for Time and Newsweek, as well as a fine art photographer who's images are exhibited in museums as well as galleries. Lynn considers her work to be about breaking limiting thought patterns. Her 11th book will be released in the fall of 2009. It is a collection of self-portraits that she has made over the last 8 years. *# 1 single and #3 album in UK as a recording artist * Lucien Clergue award for Photography * NY Times Best Sellers book list - New Kids * written songs with Sting, Steve Winwood, Todd Rundgren * in collection of Museum of Modern art * in collection of Smithsonian, Polaroid, Kodak