Sherman is a widely recognized and is one other the most influential and important artist within contemporary art. She explored the consturction of identity and the nature of representation and how people are presented, through her images from movies, television and magazines. Sherman was both the model and photographer for her images, she dressed and set the scene portraying the persona of other people.
" To create her photographs, she assumes multiple roles of photographer, model, makeup artist, hairdresser, stylist, and wardrobe mistress. With an arsenal of wigs, costumes, makeup, prosthetics, and props, Sherman has deftly altered her physique and surroundings to create a myriad of intriguing tableaus and characters, from screen siren to clown to aging socialite." - http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1170
"In the “Film Stills,” which you made between 1977 and 1980, you created a cast of women, all played by yourself, who seemed to be playing classic movie roles. How did the series start?
When I moved to New York, in the summer of ’77, I was trying to think of a new way to take pictures and tell a story. David Salle had been working at some sleazy magazine company where they had lots of shots of half-clothed women around, for those photo-novellas, like a cartoon but with photos. Slightly racy. It got me thinking, this cheap, throwaway image—if you just look at one, you make up your own story.
Why use yourself as a model?
I’d been using myself in my work, in costumes and as characters, so it was natural. I took one roll of film, and I had about six different setups of characters that were all supposed to be this one actress at various points in her career. In some she’s meant to look like the ingénue in her first role. In others she’s a little bit more haggard, trying to play a younger part. I purposely developed the film in hotter chemicals to make it crackle because I wanted it to look kind of bad and grainy." - http://nymag.com/anniversary/40th/culture/45773/
Untitled Film Stills -
"Starting with the game-changing black-and-white “Untitled Film Stills” she created in the late 1970s, Cindy Sherman has shown herself to be the ultimate master of self-morphing, utilizing everything from old-fashioned makeup and prosthetics to digital technology, inventing and portraying extraordinary alter egos and multiple identities that brilliantly reflect our image-saturated culture—and in the process inventing her own genre." - http://www.artnews.com/2012/02/14/the-cindy-sherman-effect/
Sherman used her skills to produce iconic photographs that were like stills from films, she placed herself in the role of another character, setting the scene to capture an image that shows a previous or present acting experience, even though it may not necessarily be reality.
"In the Untitled Film Stills there are no Cleopatras, no ladies on trains, no women of a certain age. There are, of course, no men. The sixty-nine solitary heroines map a particular constellation of fictional femininity that took hold in postwar America—the period of Sherman's youth, and the ground-zero of our contemporary mythology. In finding a form for her own sensibility, Sherman touched a sensitive nerve in the culture at large."
"Although most of the characters are invented, we sense right away that we already know them. That twinge of instant recognition is what makes the series tick, and it arises from Cindy Sherman's uncanny poise. There is no wink at the viewer, no open irony, no camp. As Warhol said, "She's good enough to be a real actress." - http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1997/sherman/
"Modeling in several roles, she reveals gender as an unstable and constructed position, which suggests that there is no innate biological female identity. On the contrary, women adopt several roles and identities depending on their circumstances. Therefore, the roles in the Untitled Film Stills series vary from an immature schoolgirl to an attractive seducer and from a glamour diva to a caring housewife. Importantly, her work encourages self-reflection in the spectator. As Sherman argues, “I’m trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me.”- http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/sherman.html
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