Cindy Sherman
Born 1954, Glen Ridge, New Jersey
1976 BA State University College at Buffalo, New York
Selected museum exhibitions: Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2018); Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2016); Broad Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris (2006); Museum of Modern Art (1997, 2012); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1997); Basel Kunsthalle, Switzerland (1991); National Art Gallery, New Zealand (1989); Whitney Museum of American Art (1987); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1982)
Selected honors: American Academy of Arts and Sciences Award (2003); National Arts Award (2002); Governor's Arts Award, New York (2001); John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1995); John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1983)
Selected public collections: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Art Gallery of Ontario; Australian National Gallery, Canberra; Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; Whitney Museum of American Art
For forty years, Cindy Sherman has created self-reflexive photographs with herself as performer and subject. This black-and-white photograph is from her groundbreaking Untitled Film Stills, 1977-1980, in which she adopted the guise of actresses from 50s and 60s Hollywood, Film Noir, and European art-house films. Altering her pose, costume, surroundings, and framing, Sherman draws upon their roles and presentation of self, creating images with the uncanny ability to appear both specific and generic. Her photographs interrogate the construction of women’s images in films and the way mass media reflects and perpetuates stereotypes in our culture at large. In Untitled Film Still (#61), Sherman frames herself through a doorway, with a composition that implies a viewer looking at her.