Sherman appears in his historical photographic series Untitled Stills (1977-80) as actress in the B and Noir movies. When asked if she had thought about acting in her photographs, Sherman replied: “I never thought about acting. Many of Sherman’s dramas, such as 1981 Centerfolds, draw attention to stereotypes about women in society, movies, TV and in magazines.
Sherman has been credited with influential contemporary portrait photographers for his work with the Pictures Generation group in the late 1970s, namely, a still from Untitled # 13 episodes of Sherman’s epic series Untitled Still (not actually from a larger film), which earned her a wide reputation as a witty commentator on female models of his youth. Sherman studied art at Buffalo State College in 1972, where he turned his attention to photography.
In 1977, Sherman began filming stills from critically acclaimed untitled films – 69 black and white portraits – which Sherman depicts a variety of stereotypical female characters and caricatures inspired by Hollywood films, film noir and B-series – films. Using a variety of costumes, props and backgrounds to manipulate his own appearance and to create photographs. The series explores the tension between art and identity in consumer culture, which has continuously troubled the artist.
In the 1980s, Sherman moved on to direct and remodel familiar characters known to the collective psyche often in unsettling ways, usually using color film and large prints with a greater emphasis on costumes, lighting and facial expressions. In the 1980s, Sherman began using color film, exhibiting very large prints and putting more emphasis on lighting and facial expressions.
She has photographed herself in theatrical sets since the mid-1970s, transforming her appearance with makeup, costumes and wigs. After completing black and white footage from Untitled in 1980, Sherman changed to color and concentrating her work as an actress / director / photographer on women and celebrity issues, fashion photography and advertising.
In his early work, small black and white photographs known as the untitled series, Sherman explored the images of women in films from the 1950s and 1960s. Instead of referring to familiar films, Sherman suggests genres, with the result that characters appear as personality types rather than specific actresses. Such works have made her a member of the Pictures Generation group, which focuses on the continuous flow of images in the modern world.
He poses in different roles (bibliotheke, climbers and seductresses) and in different conditions (streets, courtyards, pools, beaches and interiors) [22], creating a result that resembles typical shots of Italian Neorealist or American film noir of those years.
She then enrolled in 1972 at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and received a degree in painting before moving on to photography. In 1976, she graduated from SUNY University and began working on stills from untitled films (1977-80), one of her most popular series. Cindy Sherman is one of the most famous and distinguished photographers working today.
For four decades, Cindy Sherman has been a pioneer in the construction of identity, playing with the visual and cultural codes of art, celebrity, genre, and photography. He is one of the most prominent artists of the Pictures Generation, who came of age in the 1970s and reacted to their media landscape with humor and criticism, appropriating images from advertisements, films, television and magazines for their art.
In the images as in all subsequent series, Sherman is present as a photographer, art director and performer but is absent from any introspective commentary on how a traditional self-portrait can do it – invisible actresses, tortured housewives, prim librarians – ambiguous creatures identified as archetypes of femininity, but also abandoned by context, frozen in a larger and more mysterious narrative.
Sherman usually works in series, usually photographing himself in various costumes. Sherman, who has been represented by Metro Pictures for 40 years, is known for her groundbreaking photography in which she is depicted in various forms : her series “Stills from untitled films” 1977-80 comprised of black-and-white images reminiscent of non-existent footage from Hollywood films, and at each Sherman played as a cinematographer on the camera.
In 2011 Sherman made headlines when one of his Centrefolds series was auctioned for $ 3.89 million and thus the most expensive photograph ever made in history. Sex Pictures (1992) together with an earlier series that became known as his Disaster paintings (1986-89) represent two internally vicious but complex responses to his own success in the non-immune art market… shop in the form of a provocation.
Douglas Eklund, Generation of Pictures 1974-1984, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Inverted Odyssey by Claude Calhoun, Maya Derain, Cindy Sherman, curated by Shelley Rice, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gray Gallery, University of New York, Museum of Modern Art, North Miami. From Beyond the Pale- Photography of Cindy Sherman 1977-1993, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
Cynthia Morris. Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American photographer and filmmaker best known for her conceptual portraits. He received an honorary degree from the Royal College of Art, London in 2013. Sherman was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, on January 19 and was the youngest of five children of Dorothy and Charles Sherman.
