Photography Collection

The exhibit entitled Female Trouble at the Pinakothek of Modern Art in Munich confronts the portrayal of the feminine in photography, the social constructs of gender roles and of transgenders. Photographers such as Cindy Sherman or Daniela Rossell parody images of the feminine, grotesque faces artificially distorted by trends of our consumer culture and by fads, images preferring facades to natural beauty. Long live the image of the human! Who cares about the person any more? The classic example for this type of transformation from person to a product designed for economic performance was Norma Jean. As Marilyn Monroe, she preferred death to the contradictions of her image, and she was immortalized by the image she left behind. Other than these contradictions, what could explain the fascination of Bert Stern's "Last Sitting" (1962) for Vogue Magazine, which he re-staged with Lindsey Lohan for New York Magazine , February 18, 2008. Marilyn Monroe, an icon of modernism, loathed her reduction to clichés and wanted to portray character roles. We can merely sense the reason for her tormented final years, only her friends know Norma Jean.

Marilyn Monroe was resurrected in a photo shoot featuring Lindsay Lohan. To be sure, Lohan as an image of herself is competing with numerous other images of A- and B- list celebrities dominating the hydra of entertainment media. In that she differs from Marilyn Monroe in spite of the fact that both created headlines with their excesses involving drugs and alcohol. In the end, Marilyn fell victim to her own story and to a merciless industry which produces images of human beings. Lohan wants to get a grip on her live and survive within this industry. She won’t become an icon.