Cindy Sherman - Retrospective (Art Photo Ebook)

a
prophetic 1975 series of five photographs she produced while at college,
titled A-E, Sherman attempted to alter her face with makeup and
tats, taking on different personas such as a clown in Untitled A (figure 1)
and a little girl in Untitled D (figure 4). Her fascination with self-transformation
extended to her frequent trips to thrift stores, where she purchased
vintage clothes and accessories, which suggested particular characters to her:
"So it just grew and grew until I was buying and collecting more and
more of these things, and suddenly the characters came together just because
1 had so much of the detritus from them." Sherman began wearing 3 these
different costumes to gallery openings and events in Buffalo. For example, to
attend one gallery opening, she dressed up as a pregnant woman. While
there was an obvious performative element to this practice, Sherman never
considered these outings "performances" in an artistic sense because she was
"not maintaining a character" but simply "getting dressed up to go out." 4
Untitled Film Stills, 1977-80
Upon graduation in
1977, Sherman and Longo moved to New York.
She continued her role-playing in different guises and began photographing
the results in their apartment, as in
Untitled Film Still #10 (plate io);
in outdoor locations in New York City, as in Untitled Film Still #2 1
(plate 22); in Long Island in
Untitled Film Still #9 (plate 9); and in the
Southwest in Untitled Film Still #43 (plate 48). Sherman took most
of the photographs, but some were shot by friends and family. The complete
series was first exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington,
DC in
1995, ar, d in the brochure for that show, Phyllis Rosenzweig discusses
the relationships between the works. Similar characters appear in several
photographs, resulting in mini series within the larger group. For example,
the first six images feature the same blonde actress at different points
in her career. 5
In each picture, Sherman depicts herself alone, as a familiar
but unidentifiable film heroine in an appropriate setting. The characters
include a floozy in a slip with a martini glass in
Untitled Film Still #- (plate
7); a perky B-movie librarian in Untitled Film Still #7 3
(plate 14); a
young secretary in the city in
Untitled Film Still #21 (plate 22); a voluptuous,
lower-class woman from an Italian neo-realist film in
Untitled Film Still #3 j
(plate 39); an innocent runaway in Untitled Film Still #48 (plate 47);
and a film noir victim in Untitled Film Still #5-4 (plate 58). In works such as
Untitled Film Still #ij (plate 17) and Untitled Film Still #34 (plate 35),
Sherman appears as a seductress. Speaking of one such image, she has said,
"to pick a character like that was about my own ambivalence about
sexuality— growing up with the women role models that I
had, and a lot of
them in films, that were like that character, and yet you were supposed
to be a good girl."
The power of media images to influence identity, particularly in the young,
not a recent phenomenon. Stuart and Elizabeth Ewen address the impact
films on second-generation immigrant women. They refer to those