Self Portrait, For Everyone.

森村泰昌 Yasumasa Morimura

Are you sure about that!? isn't it Picasso and Mao!? NO!

If you don't know about this funny photographer you may really think that it was Picasso or Mao in the pictures don't you? But if you look carefully you may found they are the "Recreation" Self Portrait pictures by a Japanese Artist Yasumasa Morimura, and of course the person who act the characters are also himself too. The photographer who is famously on cosplaying famous people and create the "Self Portrait" pictures for "Themselves".

Yasumasa Morimura and Marilyn Monroe



His whole photographer career life for himself are exactly what you can saw on these pictures, I mean the whole life in his photography since 1990! May be it is a bit like Cindy Sherman but the main different is Yasumasa Morimura loves only act to the famous people, or the famous painting/photographs from the history, and he started on doing these things since 1990, the era that before photoshop, so you can imaged the difficulty and the time he spent for create these kind of pictures in that time.


yasumasa morimura's first and most famous series "daughter of art history" from 1990. And this series show his strong technique and imagination for his photography. And it is funny to see as a male photographer, why he chose this topic to became the "daughters" of art history? The only different between him and Cindy Sherman from my view is. Cindy Sherman was tried to become the perfect different self in her pictures because she only trusted herself. But Morimusre San was tried to become the different people in a perfect way that created from his photography.

BTW this is not Cindy Sherman.


I own some of his book and the favourite one to me is the series "Requiem". A series which cosplaying the famous people who had the power of change the world such as Mao, Einstein, Andy Warhol, or even Hitler. And also recreated some famous documentary pictures such as the "Vietnamese police chief kills Viet Cong prisoner",  henri cartier-bresson's pictures, etc. And the funny things is in all these pictures Morimura not only being the actor for the main character but also everyone in the picture!

I respect him not only for his technique and the time he spent of his pictures, I also love his magic of turning every pictures to become "funny". Even for the serious pictures that shouldn't be fun too. May be it is true that some people may say "this should not become for fun", but hey. This is what Yasumasa Morimura is trying to tell us, if we look back to our own history most of the things that human created were so funny and laughable, isn't it?