Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is a famous Photographer based in New York. She was born in Glenridge, New Jersey in 1954 and grew up in Huntington, Long Island. She studied at Buffalo State University College where she received an MFA in 1976. As a freshmen, she began with painting but became frustrated with what she felt were restrictions with the medium and took up photography.
Sherman has said that she felt that " . . .there was nothing more to say [through painting]. I was meticulously copying other art and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead."

Considered as a conceptual artist, Cindy Sherman's work deals with contemporary issues of representation of women in the media. Though she claims to not have consciously explored these themes, her audience has interpreted her work in this context.
After to graduation she moved to New York and commenced on a series of photographic work that launched her career in 1977.
Sherman's photographic subject is usually herself, dressed in costume,in the style of a film noir, B-Grade film actress, often reminiscent of 50s and 60s films. In these works she assumes different characters, often self-created fictional ones.It was a suggestion by fellow artist, Robert Longo, that inspired this theme when he encouraged her to take photos of herself getting 'dolled' up for parties.
Her work then shifted into more intimate emotive photographs, without costume, exploring themes of fear and loneliness.
Eventually her work shifted away from taking photos of herself and she began a series of work, titled Disasters and Fairy Tales, that were completely different in style. The focus of this work was to create scenes that are macarbre, sinister and disgusting, yet beautiful. The settings were often dark, featuring prosthetic limbs and dolls parts strewn with vomit and mold.

In 1992 Sherman embarked on a series of photographs now referred to as "Sex Pictures." Instead of using herself as the model, she again uses dolls and prosthetic body parts, this time positioned in highly sexual poses. Prosthetic genitalia are used, photographed in extreme close-up and in full-colour which contributes to the 'shock' value of the work..

Recently, Sherman has returned to using herself as the model for her work in portraits that explore the theme of Californian women. Her subjects are characters, such as the 'Personal Trainer','The Divorcee' and the 'Ex-Realtor'.

Sherman's work has been the focus of many major international exhibitions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1997) traveling to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Musée d'art Contemporain de Bordeaux, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (1997-2000); the Serpentine Gallery, London and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (2003), and the Jeu de Paume, Paris (2006), traveling to Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria, Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Denmark, and Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (2006-2007).

http://www.cindysherman.com/

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