Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954)
Born Cynthia Morris Sherman, Cindy Sherman is a well-known American photographer recognized for her elaborately “disguised” self-portraits that comment on social role-playing and stereotypes. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995, Sherman lives and works in New York City. She attended State University College at Buffalo, N.Y., where she majored in art and received a bachelor's degree in 1976. Her Untitled Film Stills series (1977 – 1980) featured portraits of herself disguised in what has been best described as “stock characters from Hollywood melodramas” providing the viewer with a fresh and new perspective on photography. This series paved her way for national and international recognition. In 1981, Sherman had her first one-person exhibition, which was shown in New York, Chicago and Genoa, Italy. Since then her work has been shown in more than 75 solo exhibitions and has been a part of over 150 group exhibitions. Sixty-four museums collect her prints, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which acquired a complete set of her Untitled Film Stills in 1996. In 1997 the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art mounted a major retrospective of Sherman’s work, and the National Portrait Gallery in London presented a new retrospective in June of 2019.
