photographer of the week: cindy sherman

Cindy Sherman, born 1954, is a photographer who specializes in self portrait photography, though not in the typical sense. One could make the argument, in fact, that Sherman is an actress, as she plays the role of a different character in all of her photos. She began attending college in 1972 in the visual arts program, where she began painting. She found herself frustrated by the limits of the medium, and began dabbling in photography instead. While in college, she had also begun to experiment with what would later be one of the biggest features of her work—dressing as different characters created from clothing from a thrift store. 

Her works have a very wide range in focus, from the variety of people you may find on public transport to imitations of historical paintings to clowns. Her best known works, however, were from her series known as “Untitled Film Stills” which focuses on different female characters typical of 50’s and 60’s movies, showing different cliches. As in most of her photos, the heroines of these untold stories are generally alone. The Museum of Modern Art purchased the Untitled Film Stills series in 1995.

Sherman has also been in a few movies, as well as having produced one of her own. She has also participated in multiple international art events. She has said before that while she hopes for her works to be seen as feminist work, but that she isn’t actively pushing any theory with any of it. She does however have mixed feelings about some of her older works, as she feels that they are a bit too close to some older style pin-up pictures. A couple prints of her works have sold for over $2.5 million.

Despite claiming to to find social media “vulgar,” Sherman has an active Instagram account, with the most recent post at the time of writing this being from two days ago (November 15th).

sources that we were explicitly told not to use & i used anyways for reasons already explained 👍

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Sherman

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untitled_Film_Stills