Rock Star (Character Appropriation)

David Lamelas

1974 · Gelatin silver prints · Photographs

By 1974 the archetype of the rock star as exemplary rebel and truth seeker had devolved into a passé set of pantomimes to be repeated before thousands in football stadiums. A master dissembler of fact and fiction, Lamelas set the shutter of his camera to go off automatically and then posed himself in the studio as if on stage, going through those motions. Like Cindy Sherman—who began staging her Untitled Film Stills three years later—Lamelas is not acting; rather, he is reanimating clichés from within. He performs poker-faced amid an accumulation of technical effects, as the haloes of stage lights bind artist and viewer in a mutually agreed-upon fantasy.

Artist

David Lamelas

Date

1974

Medium

Gelatin silver prints

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts, 2006