Cindy Sherman – aesthetics beyond the viewfinder
Through photography Sherman questions the representation of women in modern society, mimicking typical representations found in movies, TV and magazines. Several dominant themes inform Sherman’s oeuvre, including artifice and fiction and cinema and performance; horror, the grotesque and gender and class identity. Despite her focus on the role and depiction of women, Sherman does not consider herself a feminist.
Born in New Jersey in 1954, artist and photographer Cindy Sherman attended Buffalo State College. She quickly decided that painting had too many limitations, moving onto painting, saying, "I was meticulously copying other art and then I realised I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead."
Through photography Sherman questions the representation of women in modern society, mimicking typical representations found in movies, TV and magazines. Several dominant themes inform Sherman’s oeuvre, including artifice and fiction and cinema and performance; horror, the grotesque and gender and class identity. Despite her focus on the role and depiction of women, Sherman does not consider herself a feminist.
Working in series, rather than individual pieces, her provocative works range from amusing and intriguing to disturbing and distasteful. A whole character – not just a face – is portrayed in her work. Sherman takes the role of photographer, model, makeup artist and stylist, using props, costumes and wigs to capture hundreds of different guises over the years.
"Untitled Film Stills" (1977–80) is a black and white series inspired by 1950s and 1960s Hollywood, European art house and film noir females. One of most well known photos, Untitled Film Still #14, is from this period, despite that Untitled #96 was sold for USD 2.88 million by Christies in May 2012, then, the most expensive photograph ever sold.
